The coalition government went live with its ‘Your freedom’ website this morning, to much fanfare and Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, doing the rounds of the BBC’s various breakfast broadcasts.

The purpose of the website is to give the British electorate the opportunity to feedback to government on which laws and legislations they would like to see changed or removed all together.

Some commentators and opposition politicians have approached the ‘Your freedom’ website with a great deal of cynicism but for those of us in the contracting world, in which IR35 has loomed large for over a decade, it could be the best chance yet of having IR35 abolished, or at the very least simplified with added clarity!

The PCG has been campaigning for some time now to have IR35 abolished, and it’s fair to say the results have been mixed. I’ve spoken about the legislation being a focus point of a lot of politicking during the last election and there has been conflicting messages about IR35’s future in the press in recent weeks.

What can’t be denied though is the fact that contractors would prefer to see IR35 abolished and replaced with much clearer and transparent legislation.

Well if that is what you want, I believe the Your Freedom website is the best opportunity yet for us as an industry to speak out and we should be mobilizing to do so!

The PCG currently has around 20,000 members. The FCSA, of which our sister company Parasol is a founding member, looks after the collective interests of over 50,000 contractors, and if encouraged to do so, that is a lot of voices calling for IR35 to be abolished, something that the government will be forced to pay attention to.

At the time of writing there are already of 10 separate threads on the Your Freedom website discussing the abolition or replacement of IR35, citing its debilitating effect on small business and enterprise and bemoaning the relatively small tax yield it has produced in return. We will be adding our voice to that list and encouraging the contractors, agencies and business groups we work with to do the same.

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