As you might be aware, changes are about to happen in the public sector with thousands of contractors facing disruption to their tax situation.
It is the IR35 tax change that has got everybody up in arms, and the reason is because many contractors who work in the public sector will end up paying more tax, something which many of them don’t want to do, obviously.
This has lead thousands of contractors to simply down tools and walk out. “I’ve just had enough,” said one contractor who wanted to remain nameless. No doubt they are leaving the public sector and going to offer their services elsewhere in a bid to avoid IR35.
What were the government expecting though, did they really think people would take it? Reports suggest they came up with the idea of changing the IR35 system in a bid to make £440 million a year from 20,000 hard working contractors in the public sector.
What they didn’t expect was that many of these contractors are going to walk out and never go back. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board for the people at government HQ.
One of the biggest areas of the public sector that hires contractors is IT with an estimated 18,000 on the books of Central government.
However, many reports are saying that IT contractors are the most affected by IR35, and they are not impressed at all. One example is a recent defence related IT project that is no doubt crucial for the nation…but 87 of the contractors working on that project have already left, with many more expected to follow.
It’s also come to my attention that another project involving public sector contractors, this time consisting of security consultants…well, almost half of the people in that team have already moved on to the private sector.
Let’s be honest here for a moment. Is it really a surprise this is happening? Of course it isn’t, mainly because people don’t like to lose money. Simple really isn’t it, but for some reason the organisers behind the IR35 change just couldn’t see this. Or maybe they did and just don’t care? Who knows exactly what is going on here.
What I do know is that at the end of March thousands more contractors officially come to the end of their public sector contracts, and guess what…many are not going to be renewing.
Instead, they will go boldly into the private sector, where they are not going to be subjected to this IR35 madness.
The only way they will go back is if the government decides to not go forward with the IR35 tax change, but I don’t think that is going to happen.
In the meantime thousands more public sector contractors are going to be walking out and going elsewhere.
