Your point 3 is especially on the money, and especially hard to argue with...

With you on the rest of your comment. Isn't it ironic that a real live example popped up just below this thread?

As for "The main objective in this is ultimately to have more people see what is really going on" - I suspect you're wasting your time as much as I have been over the years. However, when the UK independent IT sector finally collapses, they'll notice soon enough. I can remember the heydays in the nineties/early noughties when we were on £6/700 a day, the likes of EY, Crapita, the big accountancy firms/consultancies and all those idiots, were charging £1200-£1500 a day and their people were utterly useless. We used to carry them...

These are very dark times indeed. Luckily, I can bow out soon - sooner than I think I suspect - I doubt I will last the month. Time to kill the Company, and go on the dole. At least my NI will be paid.

I'll just refer you to my earlier comment, and suggest that you choose which of the categories I have outlined you fit into.

Well said. I started as an IT contractor in 1980, and I made a good living for more than 20 years, including several stints abroad. IR35, even in its original guises, killed that, so I changed my emphasis, took a massive pay cut and simplified my working life.

The new IR35 rules will utterly ruin the contracting market, and not just in IT. It is incomprehensible to me that any Conservative government would do that. Mind you, this government is not conservative (small c).

Nobody has questioned your statements because they are spot on.

I too lent my vote to Boris to get Brexit done, and he had better do it. After this debacle, it's touch and go whether that will be enough. My livelihood has been destroyed by lockdown.

For me, the nub is this. If I didn't work from home, I would pay business rates on my premises.. As a tiny business, I would get 100% rate relief, and therefore pay nothing. As a business rate "payer", I would be eligible for, and would have already received, a £10K grant. That is, not a loan, but a handout. As it is, I get the square root of diddly squat, and am not eligible for any of their other bail-out schemes including dole money. My business has been killed off by politicians.

This article is spot on.

Reading the comments under this article has been a profoundly depressing experience.

Some commentators are quite clearly morons, some ill-informed, some seem to be holier than thou expert paragons of business and commerce. Luckily, some do seem to "get it".

I have a small one-man-band IT consultancy, turning over about £30K. I have no employees, and I have a home office so I don't pay business rates. I can't be self-employed, I can't furlough myself as under pain of a large fine and/or imprisonment I must not allow my business to run at a loss. I have no business debt and I do not want to incur any when my income stream has ended with no sign of a resurgence. I am not entitled to Job Seekers Allowance, nor UC.

I have had no income whatsoever for 6 weeks, and no sign of any for the next 6 at all, if even then.

My client base - similarly small businesses - has been decimated. Many have gone under already, many have given up, called it a day and retired. Those who are still left - a band that dwindles weekly, are not spending any money at all.

A large chunk of my income comes in January for annual hosting subscriptions, and I use most of that to pre-pay regular costs so as to take advantage of discounts. That money has gone.

The rest come in during the year in small consultancy deals via happy clients, - see above...

My costs haven't stopped, bills still come in - kit, electricity, broadband and so on. I have no income to pay them.

To those who accuse us of expecting a handout whilst "evading" tax and NI, you seem to be totally unaware how a tiny business works. And, importantly, it's not that we expect anything, we are smarting at the sheer unfairness of it all.

Someone commented earlier that the Welsh (Labour) government had rescued his business with a £10K grant. Here's a true story:

An acquaintance of mine, whom I know well, a full-time, furloughed, employee of a big company, has, with his wife- a self-employed interior designer and seamstress who will receive the self-employed handouts - two holiday lets on which they pay £0 business rates (thanks to small business rates relief). They have just received cheques for grants of £20K with no strings attached. They appear, to me, not to deserve it, but one of those payments would keep me going for the rest of the year, and enable me to keep my business going.

My main gripe is that it all seems to be unfair to small businessmen
like me, who have quite literally been left for dead, whereas others are
being helped with handouts. I may well be mistaken, or maybe I just need to be pointed in the right direction, but it seems there is nothing for us at all, whereas for some I know, this is an elongated paid holiday...

Absolutely true!

I am the sole director of a small ltd. I have no employees to furlough, and I am not allowed to be self-employed. I also have no eligibility for UC.

My business is IT consultancy and support - I no longer have any clients to support of service.

As a service to my clients I offer web and email hosting, and some online data storage services. All of those cost me money, and the income is a) annual (already paid in January) and b) a token gesture as a service to my clients not a profit centre.

I have all my costs, and no income for the foreseeable future. I am not able to claim anything, yet I see my mates who are self-employed still working and being paid 80% of last years income by me and my fellow tax payers.

This is not fair, and nor is it equable.

You presume too much. My once profitable business no longer has any clients...

Well said!

It's because I want conservative policies that I stopped voting for the Conservatives... Cameron saw to that.

+1

Don't feed the idiot. Sorry, troll.