I`m an accountant: What do my contractors need to do to prepare for IR35?

Your contracting clients have had a tough year: they’ve seen work cancelled at short notice and been repeatedly overlooked by government support schemes. To cap it all off, new private sector IR35 rules will be coming into play in April 2021 that could vastly affect their tax liabilities and incomes – and as a contractor accountant, it’s your job to help them prepare.

Maybe your contractors have been hounding you for months about IR35, or maybe you haven’t heard a peep from them on the matter. Either way, now is the perfect time to catch up with your contractors and draw up a plan of action for IR35, before you get swept up in the January Self-Assessment deadline rush. But first, you’ll need to make sure you have a firm grip on the updated rules and the financial and legal safeguards that you need to put in place to protect your clients’ incomes and keep them compliant.

That’s where Kingsbridge comes in. We’ve a wealth of experience in supporting contractors and have developed a comprehensive and bespoke IR35 service to help our partner accountants, recruiters and end clients prepare for the new legislation.

How can Kingsbridge help?

The release of the new Bond film may have been delayed twice this year, but since we’re not expecting the same to happen to IR35, we’ve developed a secret weapon: the Kingsbridge IR35 status tool.

Exclusive and award-winning, our status tool produces an accurate result of whether a contract lies inside or outside IR35. This can be helpful if your client wants to challenge the status determination produced by an end client, or you want to keep a record to evidence decisions on status for audit purposes.

The Kingsbridge IR35 status tool is completely unique because it’s a hybrid solution. We ally the ease-of-use and quick response of an online survey – made up of simple, but carefully worded, yes/no questions – with the wisdom and experience of our expert advisors.

For clear-cut determinations, the survey is enough to give you a result in minutes that you    can be confident in.

For more borderline decisions, we’ll refer the case on to one of our in-house experts who’ll  give it a specialist review before making a judgement – with suggestions for contractual    amendments and changes to working practices if necessary.

The brains behind the service come from Kingsbridge’s Head of Tax, Andy Vessey ATT. Andy is an ex-HMRC inspector and qualified accountant who has defended over 500 tax investigations – and won almost all of them. He has been involved with IR35 since its early days, and has developed an in-depth working knowledge of the legislation.

Contract working is a multi-party process. The Kingsbridge IR35 tool can unite everyone in the service supply chain around a robust, auditable and evidenced decision on status determination. It offers a way for accountants to satisfy themselves, their clients and any other parties that a status determination is fair and legal.

We understand the complexities of the contracting world, which is why our tool can be used for one off-determinations or as part of a broader, subscription-based package which combines scalable use of the tool with a suite of IR35 services and support.

A comprehensive IR35 service

As April 2021 draws closer, accountants should be anticipating a cascade of IR35-related queries. Are you equipped to answer them?

Keeping your contractors tax-compliant is a huge part of your role, and they will expect you to be clued-up on these changes. You wouldn’t be doing your job properly if they end up being worse-off as a result of IR35, and they may start looking for alternative expertise if they can’t get quick and accurate answers to their questions.

With Kingsbridge’s IR35 solutions, we can offer training for you and your staff on all things IR35 as well as unlimited access to an IR35 helpline for both you and your clients, making sure that, whatever their situation, you’ve got the answers and the expertise to hand. We can also support you with IR35 events and client meetings to enhance the service you’re providing to your contractor clients; our in-house expertise includes legal eagles, contract specialists and tax consultants to support all parties in the contracting supply chain.

Your action plan for the next 3 months: 

– Connect with your contractors and see where they are up to with their IR35 preparations

– Request a demo of the Kingsbridge IR35 status tool

– Book IR35 training for you and your staff

Click here to find out more about Kingsbridge’s expert, specialist IR35 services for accountants working with contractors.