by Laurence Slavin, Partner
HMRC’s IR35 campaign which is designed to push individuals into employed roles rather than self-employed suffered a rather public defeat yesterday with Lorraine Kelly, the television presenter winning a case brought by HMRC.
The judgment is interesting…..”for the time Ms. Kelly is contracted to perform live on air she is public “Lorraine Kelly”; she may not like the guests she interviews, she may not like the foods she eats, she may not like the film she viewed but that is where the performance lies”.
The case is really about the level of control exercised by Ms. Kelly, but surely there are some parallels with self employed locum GPs? Presumably there is a performance going on too, dealing with patients that the GP may not like and having to deal with them too?
HMRC may yet appeal against the decision, but our experience is that they have not had an easy time imposing IR35.
Watch this space.
This article was written by Laurence Slavin, a partner at Ramsay Brown who specialises in the finances of Primary Care and GPs. He can be contacted at [email protected] or 020 8370 7710