Letters - Challenge Revenue view.

I read the extract from new publication IR35 – A Guide for Contractors that was published on your website and highlighted in your magazine (What’s happening on Accountancy Age.com, page 3, 18 October). I was particularly surprised to see that, when listing ‘major factors’ determining employment status for tax purposes, the guide fails to mention possibly the most important factors, namely: 1. Requirement to provide personal service rather than ability to appoint a substitute, and 2. The need for there to be mutuality of obligation between the worker and the end client Instead, the author appears to have swallowed the Revenue’s slant on status issues and cites as a major factor such relative irrelevancies as the basis of payment and who provides the equipment and premises.

Case law lays down that the basis of payment is not a key indicator, neither is the issue of using the client’s equipment or working at the client’s premises.

The guide does its readers a disservice if it allows the Revenue’s views on these issues to go unchallenged or fails to make clear that if you have a right of substitution that is not unreasonably fettered, it is almost certain that you have a contract for services and are outside IR35.

Kevin Miller, Professional Contractors Group Limited.