Hammond U-Turn On NICS Price Hike

Some good news to eventually come out of the awful first Philip Hammond Spring Budget for 2017. After a week of rebel Tory back benchers, many Labour party MPs and prominent industry leaders pointing out the breach in the Tory manifesto, it was clear to see that the proposed price rise for self-employed workers in their National Insurance Contributions (NICs) was a mistake.

It seems that before Prime Minister’s question time, Theresa May told  Mr Hammond to drop it. This is supposed to regain voters’ trust but it’s now worrying just where the £2billion will now come from when we get the Autumn budget. Maybe Philip Hammond will be gone by then!

It’s about time the government started looking more into big corporations who don’t employ directly or avoid paying the correct tax.

We have many clients who have been forced into self-employment in order to remain working. We even have some who were “advised” to start up one man Ltd companies, in order to still have work. The Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) is a form of self-employment. That was brought in by the government because they were so worried construction workers were not paying correct tax.

I can understand the disparity in NICs between self-employed and PAYE employees. Yes, both will get the seame state pension, both are entitled to NHS. However, the self-employed person has no protections or benefits that an employed person has. It could be argued that the employer contributions cover those benefits, which is why cracking down on bogus self-employment is so important.

If you have any tax questions, get in touch!