IT Consultant Wins IR35 Personal Service Company Case

The government has been consulting on extending the personal service company rules, that currently apply to public sector workers, to those in the private sector and it was announced in the Budget on 29 October 2018 that this will take effect from April 2020 for medium and large businesses.  But,  in the meantime, tax tribunal decisions are still being decided against HMRC.

In a recent case involving an IT consultant working on various projects to implement the new Universal Credit system, the First Tier Tax Tribunal decided that the consultant would not have been an employee if directly engaged. A key factor was that the the level of control over the consultant fell far below the sufficient degree required to demonstrate a contract of service.