The legislation introduced in July 2000 is designed to target disguised employment. It uses tests to find out if someone is genuinely in business on their own account or a disguised employee of the client. In this context, "disguised employees" means workers who receive payments from a client via an intermediary, i.e. their own limited company, and whose relationship with their client is such that had they been paid directly they would be employees of the client.

[–] grindemup@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And from that very same article:

It is hard to judge the effectiveness of the legislation since as of 2010 HMRC has not published any figures. On 6 January 2004 Dawn Primarolo was asked in Parliament how many investigations under the IR35 regulation have (a) been initiated, (b) resulted in additional revenue, and (c) been concluded without securing additional revenue. In a written answer she replied that it was not possible with any accuracy to isolate data relating solely to this legislation.[23]

...

The July 2009 issue of IT Now, the British Computer Society magazine, reported that between April 2002 and March 2008 the Government had raised £9.2 million under IR35 legislation compared to the £220 million that was initially expected.[25]

This amongst many other criticisms!

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Those numbers from the mid-2000s are sort of irrelevant because the rules got tightened up a LOT more since then, which leaves you only with that first bit in which you're trying to claim that lack of data is support for your case.

The reason there's no 2020s statistics on "how much money did IR35 bring in" is because such a statistic would rely on the calculation of a counterfactual based on how the world worked in the 20th century, making it effectively meaningless as a statistic.

I can however tell you firsthand that I know several people personally whose clients have been forced to take them on as regular staff within the last five years due to recent crackdowns.

Also, one interesting thing I noticed searching just now, is that almost every single piece about IR35 is written by organisations and groups who very much enjoyed not paying tax, so it's almost entirely hit pieces...

[–] grindemup@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

To be honest I don't have a case to make, I just found it a bit glaring that you mentioned it was "easy to fix" but then referenced an article which didn't really provide any clear evidence for that. I'm entirely open to the idea of IR35 (though to be honest I haven't considered it closely), and I can easily believe there are lots of hit pieces, but if it is as easily effective as you claim then there should be academic articles providing evidence even despite the confounding factors.