IR35 hands the advantage to the big consultancies, reader warns

I'm sure it suits your political objectives to talk about "fairness in comparison with other employees" and other such well worn sound bites. The original justification for this despicable piece of legislation was the 'Friday to Monday' syndrome yet this legislation does nothing to stop it.

What it does, very successfully is to distort the market place in favour of the large consultancy firms by killing off their small competitors and allow them to increase their rates. It will reduce flexibility, increase costs and damage competitiveness in the IT industry.

It is blatantly unfair to compare the income of a contractor's business with the salary earned by an employee of his client. The employee has the benefit of continuity of work, a career path and support from his employer. He is provided with equipment, training, pension, holiday and sickness pay and other benefits at no cost to himself.

The contractor has none of these benefits from his client and has to provide for all of these and other expenses and taxes out of his business income (indeed, since when did an employee also pay his employer's NI contributions ?). The contractor has to make his own way and succeed or fail.

When the client's employee gets sick he doesn't have to worry about how he will pay the mortgage this month, his employer will continue to pay his salary. A contractor who is unable to work for a week immediately takes a 25% reduction in income for the month. If that is not a risk please explain what is.

Stop hiding behind the party line, open your eyes and your mind, look at what is happening here and ask yourself how is this "fair in comparison with other employees" ?