[Silhouette]

I haven’t been in the UK since a while so I hear that now things changed so you can no longer pretend to run a company when being essentially an employee.

That's actually been the case for about 20 years now. The relevant term is "IR35".

[mrtksn]

Hmm, I have been driving relatively fast lately. must be the relativistic speeds that 20 years is not the same for both of us!

Anyway, apparently the changes are postponed to April 2021 at stationery frame of reference: https://www.taylorhopkinson.com/ir35/

[Silhouette]

Those are merely administrative changes. The law and tax rules themselves will still be much the same as they have been since 2000 or so.

The reason this is big news anyway is that for the first time, large clients will themselves become responsible for determining whether an engagement falls under IR35 or not, and may also become liable to the government for the shortfall if the determination made is incorrect. Until that point, it's the freelancer/contractor operating through an intermediary who is on the hook (except for various government contracts, where the analogous change came in a while back).

In a surprise to no-one who has ever worked in the independent sector, this has made lots of big businesses that were formerly quite regular users of the flexible workforce much more sceptical, and many big names appear to have outright shut down this way of working for now.

At some point, presumably our government will realise that it has to pay for its spending spree during the coronavirus and that getting the economy back on its feet is going to need that flexible workforce, so with a bit of luck they'll come to their senses and finally do something about IR35, though I'm not holding my breath.