The appellant is Mainpay, an umbrella company which engages temporary workers, principally in the education, health and social care sectors, and has contracts with employment agencies used by hospitals and schools.

The Upper Tribunal dismissed the case, but did not address the quantum.

The final settlement with HMRC is likely to be significantly higher than the £135,000 cited in the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) decision released in December 2021 as the quoted figure only related to a sample of the workforce for the tax year ended 5 April 2011.

The appeal at the Upper Tribunal centred around Mainpay’s rejection of the FTT decision in 2022 around whether subsistence payments for contractors were deductible and whether each workplace attended by Mainpay’s workers was a permanent workplace.

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