Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department has taken to advise people affected by proposed changes to the IR35 rules from April 2020.

The Government is committed to working with organisations to ensure changes to the rules are implemented correctly. HMRC are undertaking an extensive programme of education and support to help organisations prepare for the reform. This includes:

• Offering one-to-one support to more than 2,000 of the UK’s biggest employers, and writing directly to 43,000 medium sized businesses and other organisations.
• Providing large and medium sized businesses, public bodies, and charities with factsheets to share with their contractors, and publishing this factsheet on gov.uk.
• Holding workshops with small tax agents, recruitment agencies, charities, and public bodies.
• Holding at least weekly webinars, with small tax agents, recruitment agencies, charities, public bodies and contractors.
• An enhanced version of the Check Employment Status for Tax online tool was published in November 2019 to help individuals and organisations make the right status determinations and apply the off-payroll rules correctly.

The reform of the off-payroll working rules in April 2020 will apply only to medium and large-sized businesses, minimising administrative burdens for the vast majority of engagers. The existing rules will continue to apply to the smallest 1.5m businesses.