Controversial new rules on IR35 which were due to come in from April 2020 have now been delayed by a year until April 2021 due to the coronavirus.
The IR35 rules apply to companies that provide personal services to other businesses in circumstances where, if it were not for the existence of the intermediary, the individual would be treated as an employee.
The new IR35 changes that had been planned for April 2020 affected private sector contractors and applied to transfer responsibility from contractors to large and medium companies to assess IR35. This would have brought the private sector in line with the public sector, where the reform was implemented in 2017 . There is concern that companies would adopt a blanket approach of treating everyone as falling within the IR35 rules, rather than risk falling foul and increasing their own exposure.