Contractors will see that little progress has been made on their behalf by the IR35 Forum as the latest minutes reveal that HMRC continues to stonewall over publishing any IR35 statistics.
HMRC committed to “planning to review the IR35 pilot over the summer” but would not be more specific about when it will release relevant IR35 statistics, apart from confirming that it “intended to publish these on a set timetable basis in the future”.
HMRC refused to reveal its IR35 statistics when faced with a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by ContractorCalculator in May 2013. HMRC cited section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act as applying, claiming it planned to publish the data at the same time as ContractorCalculator’s request, which the forum minutes show is clearly not the case.
As a result, following the introduction of a new IR35 administration framework in May 2012, the so-called ‘IR35 pilot’, the only evidence of HMRC’s performance reported to the forum was about the Contract Review Service.
According to HMRC, the Contract Review Service “had reviewed 94 contracts and given responses in 89 cases; in 79 of those cases it was ‘unable to give an opinion’.”
HMRC suggested that the reason for such poor performance was because “complete certainty was required” and “the caller was reluctant to provide further information or allow the service to go to the end-user client”.
HMRC agreed to review its procedures to determine whether it could provide opinions without speaking to clients, but refused to “accept as evidence IR35 specialist opinion”, saying that it would only “give weight” to IR35 contract reviews by non-HMRC experts.
The public sector off-payroll rules were also discussed, with Forum members highlighting to the Treasury representatives “that there was a lack of consistency in the way departments apply the guidance”.
Furthermore, non-government members of the forum highlighted that “there was a pre-determined view that contractors should be inside IR35 and people of low risk are investigated”, and that the rules are “encouraging contractors to move away from the public sector”.
The next IR35 Forum meeting is scheduled for 1 August 2013.