IR35; what the hell is going on, apart from nothing?

When an accountant first said to me “You don’t know what IR35 is?!” with a look of open mouthed incredulity that a normal person would have reserved for discovering that a forty-two year old mother of three was still a virgin, I knew right then and there it was going to be the sucky kind of litigious revelation that cost me money and possibly sanity. Still, I’m not one for recklessly flaunting the rules, so I toddled of to Wikipedia to find out what the hell all the fuss was about.

I’m not an accountant so I only made it to the second sentence before I awoke with the imprint of the “F” key in my forehead, and most of “Ctrl” up my nose. However I found a tame accountant to explain it to me using the characters from The Princess Bride and I did eventually learn to loath the legislation for the convoluted money-squeezing pile of hate it is.

Anyway, you have probably seen the new IR35 legislation that came out of the budget and are, like me, delighted that the Chancellor has finally pulled his finger out and got the thing organised so it is not so annoying and difficult to the point of actually needing a degree in accounting to properly understand… Oh wait, that hasn’t happened.

It’s the “New” Labour political shamblefest all over again, all mouth and no trousers. I’m seriously running out of parties who don’t say one thing and then vote for the other (I’m looking at you Liberal Democrats).

Before the budget people who comment on this sort of thing were saying stuff like:

“‘Unacceptable’ if Osborne ducks IR35″

“Chancellor said to agree that now is the right time to act on IR35.”

“Most recruiters say IR35 is ineffective”

And after it was more along the lines of:

“IR35 ‘better the devil you know’”

“IR35 to stay in tried & tested format”

“Osbourne takes pragmatic approach to legislation”

Even The PCG released a hurried mailshot after the OTS Report on IR35 saying they “welcome recommendation to suspend IR35″, (however the original article was amended after they read further than the second line of the report) – and after the budget they said that the Chancellor’s unambitious meandering “ticked many boxes for freelancers”.

Hang on just a fother mucking second. So freelancers are out there doing their stuff with this horrible blancmange of a law hanging over them, waiting to crap litigation all over them the second they do (or is it don’t?) disguise themselves whist working, and the collective response is; “meh”?

Freelance Advisor obviously have people who know about things like this to write about them. I review stuff with lights and/or pages and then contribute the occasional ill-informed verbal rampage (this is leaning towards the latter). What I’m saying is that I don’t usually feel moved to comment on things that that give me a headache to read about, but having escaped the ravages of IR35 legislation (by getting a job) and hearing the squishing noise of many other freelance portals abandoning their spines, I thought I’d just chuck a general “screw you George” in the direction of the Chancellor for being such a wet blanket, since no-one else seems to have noticed that exactly naff all was done.