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Small Businesses: Off-payroll Working

Asked by Ben MaguireLiberal DemocratTreasuryTabled Answered 26 March 2025UIN 39696

The question

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department plans to make an assessment of the potential impact of off-payroll working IR35 reforms on (a) self-employed workers and (b) small businesses.

Answered by James Murray

The off-payroll working rules, also known as IR35, do not apply to the genuinely self employed. They are designed to ensure that individuals working like employees but through their own company, pay broadly the same income tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs) as those who are directly employed.

On 27 February 2025, HMRC published updated internal analysis on the impacts of the 2021 reform.

HMRC has previously published external research looking at the impacts of the reform to the off-payroll working rules in the private and voluntary sectors, which were introduced in April 2021.

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