Section 660: Briefing Document and update
Following this article I have been discussing the situation with several key players and UKTECH's tax expert, Kevin Miller, has produced a briefing document.
I have discussed this with the CBI, Forum of Private Business (FPB), and the Institute of Management Consultants, (IMC) and have circulated the attached briefing paper.
I also took the opportunity to alert Mark Prisk MP and Kerry Pollard MP when I met them at the House of Commons for an All Party Parliamentary Small Business Group meeting this week. I have known Kerry Pollard since the very beginning of IR35 and he is one of the few Labour MPs who tried his best to ameliorate the impact of IR35. He is also a Director of the Genesis Initiative (A grouping of SME organisations where UKTECH has a place on the Senate and I am a main board Director). Kerry has expressed a keen interest in learning more about this issue and we will be keeping him informed.
Mark Prisk in his new role as Shadow Financial Secretary has had to step down as a Director of the Genesis Initiative, but we keep in regular contact on issues affecting freelancers. (UKTECH and Mark recently ran a seminar in the House of Commons on What future freelancing in the UK?). I briefed Mark on the Section 660 issue and it is now very much on his agenda.
The briefing paper has been circulated to other influential parties including John May, an authoritative figure in the small business community and a policy advisor to the Genesis Initiative. We will continue to spread the word through the Senate members, the CBI and others.
What can you do?
- Please feel free to pass the briefing paper on to your own contacts.
- Your feedback on the briefing paper is welcome, please use the comment facility below.
- Complete the on-line survey (To the left of this article - log-in to vote
- If you are affected at present by a Section 660 attack, please let me know. Call me on 0207 462 7908 to discuss
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Four years ago...to the day
It is ironic that four years to the day after putting out the very first newsletter on IR35 to the members of the UKTECH network I am writing this article.
The difference is four years ago I was sitting in my office at home, struggling to keep a website up under thousands of hits and trying to understand what a mailing list was supposed to do. Now with Kevin Miller, Susie Hughes and the rest of the team at UKTECH coupled with the 35,000 members of the UKTECH network and the contacts we have developed over the past four years we are in better shape to deal with this latest threat.
However, four years ago to the day, I was writing a newsletter to freelancers because none of us could understand why the Government would introduce a measure which so clearly damaged a vibrant and important part of the UK economy. Which penalised the good business practice of keeping fixed costs low to maximise profits and where even top experts could not agree on what a business had to do; to be certain of meeting the regulations
It is depressing to report that some things don't change.
Editor note 28th March 2003: Briefing document updated to add comment from Institute of Management Consultants