HMRC Attack Intermediary Agencies

Part of a general move against the practice, the Revenue have issued a consultation document 6 days after George Osborne’s Autumn Statement 2013.  It is entitled ‘Onshore Employment Intermediaries: False Self Employment’.

This is a niche area and many will be unaffected, but it will impact on the construction and security industries and so it will nevertheless affect a fair number of workers and employers.

I stress that it is only consultation at this point, but we have to assume that it will be enacted in statute come April 2014.

What HMRC are after are those ’employment arrangements’ that are claimed to be self-employed by putting an agency between the worker and the employer.

From now on, business planning needs to ignore the agency and self-employment route and factor in new national insurance costs from April 2014.  Keep an eye out for the actual legislation, but you should be planning for it to happen.