Onshore employment intermediaries: false self-employment
The government is consulting on legislation to prevent the use of employment intermediaries to avoid National Insurance contributions and income tax by presenting employment relationship falsely as self-employment.
There is evidence that some companies and employment businesses are using employment intermediaries to disguise the employment of their workers as self employment, primarily to avoid paying employers National Insurance and to reduce the costs associated with workers’ employment rights.
This consultation document sets out the government’s plans to improve fairness within the tax system so that businesses that follow the rules cannot be undercut by those avoiding their tax obligations.
The purpose of the consultation is to seek views on the detailed policy design and draft legislation in order to confirm, as far as possible, that it will achieve the policy objective with no unintended effects.