A number of recent tribunal decisions have highlighted once again the subjective nature of employment status. These high-profile IR35 cases confirm the well documented stories of HMRC chasing down large numbers of television producers for additional tax and national insurance contributions (NICs).

Historically, it is reasonably clear that HMRC has not had the resources to properly police the operation of IR35. This probably gave the large numbers of those operating through personal service companies (PSCs) a false sense of security.  Since HMRC had not challenged the IR35 status of their companies, they thought they were in the clear!