Philip Hammond and this government seem to have something against the UK’s 4.85 million self-employed people. Over the last year they have introduced a whole raft of measures to squeeze the self-employed sector, from damaging reforms to dividends taxes to the disastrous changes to IR35 tax laws in the public sector.
Even as the UK prepares to cut itself loose and sail into uncharted waters outside the EU, instead of supporting one of our most productive sectors, the Chancellor seems determined to suffocate it. Most recently, in the run-up to the Autumn Budget, he announced that the scrapping of Class 2 National Insurance Contributions would be delayed – a move that will cost every self-employed person £150.
Now there are reports he plans to use the Budget to drop an even more devastating bombshell on the self-employed: extending the disastrous changes to IR35 from the public sector to the private sector.
From April this year, public sector bodies like government departments and the NHS were forced to assess whether the freelancers they engaged were indeed genuine freelancers or should be ‘inside IR35’ and paying tax like employees.
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