Question 1

What is IR35, and who does it affect?

Accepted Answer

**IR35** — formally the off-payroll working rules — is UK tax legislation addressing people who work through their own company but who, stripped of that company, would look like employees of the client. Its purpose is to tax those engagements as employment.

**The problem it targets.** Someone leaves a job on Friday and returns on Monday doing identical work, through a personal service company, paying substantially less tax and national insurance while the client avoids employer national insurance. HMRC calls this **disguised employment**.

**The test: would this be employment if the company were removed?** The factors come from employment case law, not a statutory checklist:

**Control** — does the client direct what, how, when and where you work?

**Substitution** — could you genuinely send a qualified substitute, and would the client accept? A real, unfettered right of substitution points strongly away from employment.

**Mutuality of obligation** — is the client obliged to offer work and you to accept it?

Secondary factors include financial risk, providing your own equipment, integration into the organisation, exclusivity, and how the parties describe the relationship. **No single factor decides it** — it is an overall picture, which is exactly why it generates so much dispute.

**"Inside IR35"** means the engagement is treated as employment for tax. **"Outside"** means it is genuine self-employment.

**The change that made it contentious.** Responsibility for determining status moved from the worker's company to the **client** — in the public sector first, then to medium and large private sector clients. Clients bear the liability for getting it wrong, which prompted many to issue blanket inside-IR35 determinations or stop engaging limited company contractors entirely, rather than assess case by case.

**What follows in practice:** a **status determination statement** from the client, a right to dispute it, deductions at source where inside, and **no corresponding employment rights** — which is the asymmetry contractors object to most.

General information only, not tax advice.

Question 2

What is the difference between an employee, a worker and self-employed?

Accepted Answer

In UK law these are three distinct employment statuses with sharply different rights, and what your contract calls you does not decide it — a tribunal looks at the reality of the arrangement.

Question 3

What is TUPE and what happens when your employer is taken over?

Accepted Answer

TUPE — the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations — protects employees when the business they work for changes hands. Its central effect is that your employment transfers

Question 4

What is an umbrella company, and how does it work?

Accepted Answer

A company that employs contractors and pays them through payroll on behalf of the agencies or clients they work for. It exists to solve a tax-status problem, and it has become the default route for a

Question 5

How does a flexible working request work?

Accepted Answer

In the UK, flexible working is a statutory request process with defined steps and a limited set of grounds for refusal — not simply asking a manager nicely, though it frequently starts that way. What

Question 6

What is industrial action, and what makes a strike lawful?

Accepted Answer

Collective action by workers to put pressure on an employer — and in the UK it is lawful only where a detailed set of statutory requirements has been met, any one of which can render it unlawful. The

Question 7

Can you work from another country for a UK employer?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, and it is considerably more complicated than it appears — the obstacles are tax, immigration and employment law in the destination country, none of which cares that your laptop connects to

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