Sometimes, when I sit at home of an evening, contemplating my rapidly rising energy bills, my car that needs replacing and my kids quickly approaching university age; I think to myself perhaps I should take the red pill and go back to contracting.
I mean how hard can it be? You just submit your resume to one or two agents and sit back and let the work come in. Okay so the agents take a cut but that's off what the client pays, not what you see, so there's no big deal there and everyone's got to make a living right?
Hmmm, the thing is, it's not that simple anymore. If you do it like that then there is a very good chance that you'd be caught by IR35. Don't know what IR35 is? Well it's one of our Gordon's little stealth taxes designed to send all contractors back to where they belong, safe inside the cubes of large corporates, who carry the cost of calculating the tax for the government - kind of like the government outsourcing the tax collection to the people from whom they are collecting the tax. Talk about adding insult to injury :) I mean, I wouldn't say the government were picking on IT contractors per se, but when you are actually mentioned (by name) in the legislation, you've got to wonder.
Anyway, what IR35 does is to tax you as if you were an employee of the company to which you are contracting, even though you get none of the benefits of being an employee (holiday pay, sickness pay etc.) in short, it's a horrible little piece of legislation. What it means is, if you want to go it alone, you have to do just that, go it alone. Meaning you have to find your own clients. And how are you supposed to find your own clients whilst you are working for clients? Well you can't can you?
The only way you can do it is to be a "rockstar" so well known in the industry that you are the "go to guy", and that's not me I'm afraid. I don't have a flow of people emailing me looking for me to come and contract for them. Which means I'll just have to put the bills behind the clock on the mantelpiece and head off back to work on Monday.
Gee, you'd think that's what the government planned when they brought out the legislation. :)