The Budget may have some positive things in it to look forward to, but one recruitment industry body says that more could have been done for contract workers.
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation spoke out in protest at George Osborne’s new Budget, remarking that the British economy simply won’t see the growth and recovery it so desperately needs unless limited companies, freelancers, and umbrella company workers are given more support. The definition of who is or isn’t ‘self-employed’ should have been overhauled in he Budget to help contract workers better navigate the sometimes Byzantine labyrinth of tax law in the UK, according to REC, and the fact that the incredibly murky guidance on IR35 hasn’t been suitably overhauled, I’m inclined to agree with the REC’s protests.
The guidance for determining if you as a contractor or a freelancer need to ensure you don’t fall under disguised employment rules is incredibly obtuse at the moment, with the current system muddying the waters as to whether or not you need to jump through the hoops of IR35. On top of that, many contractors have said that they have worries about whether they’re filling out their self assessment forms properly – which might be good for the nation’s accountants, but small businesses and freelancers often don’t have the room in their own budgets to pay for accountancy services if they can’t help it.
The REC also said that it had serious concerns about the state of the information technology sector as well, in particular the fact that there seems to be a serious shortage of qualified IT contractors working in the UK. On top of that, the types of positions being offered to IT professionals are often calling for skill sets that currently don’t exist in high enough numbers, which creates the paradoxical situation of there being both not enough positions open and too few at the same time – it’s a bit mind-boggling but it starts to make sense if you squint and tilt your head to the side for a few moments.
The REC would like to see more IT sector support, and I can’t blame them in the least. Depending on how the Government could possibly go about doing so – perhaps by offering tax breaks to firms that engage in training IT staff with the skills they are lacking at the moment – there could be some room for growth in this area, but the jury’s currently out on whether there’ll be any help from the public sector towards increasing IT contracting opportunities.
