It is to protect the majority of the people. I've seen a lot of cases in the news where people are forced to change into a contracting role.

A lot of these 'share' companies often don't do anything to inform the tax authority what work these contractors did for them, thereby making tax evasion way too easy.

If you're a contractor you really need to know what you're doing. Meaning: a lot of things you'll need to budget for because it is your responsibility. If a lot of people don't grasp that, then the problem becomes a government problem.

I'm an employee and have pretty flexible working times. I don't see why I'd ever want to be a contractor where as only benefit you have more flexible working hours. That's not a change!

I am a contractor, and I find a lot of benefit in working under this paradigm. I think the idea that the government should protect people from their own choices is quite an unpleasant one, as someone can always switch from a contractor back to an employee if they find it unsavoury.

Benefits I enjoy from contracting:

- B2B transactions mean I can retain some cash in the business for investment while paying myself a good salary.

- My performance is more important to my role because I can be easily let go - I prefer to align my interests with those of my employer in this way.

- Being a contractor also means being a consultant to an extent. I am trusted to bring in expertise to improve processes and I enjoy having a positive impact in this way.

I agree that the ongoing issue with labour exploitation with things like zero-hours contracts, forced contracting and using apprenticeships to force lower-than-minimum wages are bad, but they don't take away from the value of contracting itself. In an attempt to address labour exploitation, IR35 and other measures are also becoming major problems for legitimate contractors too.

> I think the idea that the government should protect people from their own choices is quite an unpleasant one

If the government doesn't protect people against immoral companies, who will? If an employee doesn't understand their obligations to pay extra taxes and cover their own forms of insurance, and doesn't ask for enough money up front to cover those costs, they'll go to jail and/or be bankrupt. That creates costs for taxpayers and corporations, the net loss likely higher than the cost of a bit of regulation and education.

Why not educate those employees (or ensure that they can't get stiffed for a lack of education) instead of allowing them to be funneled (or scammed) into an unproductive dead end? As a taxpayer, I'd rather see them protected and productive than unproductive and bankrupt.

I think the sticking point here is that you're talking from a viewpoint of companies pressuring employees to convert from full-time to contract. I don't know if that happens, and it's not the viewpoint I'm talking from - I don't think a company should be able to pressure an employee to do anything outside of their employment agreement and there certainly isn't legal grounds for them to be able to enforce something like that. Harming legitimate contractors in an attempt to solve this issue by proxy is illogical.

oh they do miss out on a lot of tax that's why HMRC is so hot on disguised employment - though strangely "self employed" lawyers are not caught by this even if they are working on the same case for years

working on the same case for years does not disqualify a relationship from being a B2B one - service companies do this all the time. Having a service company with 1 employee does not suddenly make that relationship invalid.

Tell that to 99.9% of IT contractors caught by ir35 and you will get a bitter laugh

I am an IT contractor, I'm well aware of this. My point is that what HMRC is doing is going after legitimate business relationships completely in spite of the problem they're trying to solve.