All herald the end of IR35, the complex and utterly futile attempt at raising extra revenue by re categorising self employed individuals as deemed employees – not quite! Although the Small Business Minister, Mark Frisk said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that “Individuals selling their services through small companies have their taxable income policed by the so-called IR35 legislation.This will now be abolished. We want to make sure that we could undertake a comprehensive review of small business taxation in a way that makes the need for the current IR35 legislation redundant.But we want to make sure whatever we change is a lasting settlement. One of the problems with IR35 is that it’s a constantly changing set of rules.”

However, no sooner had he made this statement than people behind the scenes were scurrying around stating that he had NOT said it would be abolished. Now I like plain speaking so when I hear “This will now be abolished” I don’t think there are many areas of confusion but here we go again spin, retraction, review, consultation these are now what those immortal 5 words actually mean, so watch this space because no one who is self employed is off the hook