The Pinnacle of Safe and Equitable IR35 Compliance
Opportunity for anyone providing IR35 compliance services
34square is a web application / platform that provides arguably best in class IR35 assessment and compliance functionality, including a unique capability to actually strengthen engagement credentials for Outside IR35. We have helped a number of clients and many contractors over the past few years. However, this is not core to our overall business endeavours and we will reluctantly be pulling back. If anyone is interested in acquiring this platform, please PM me and we'd be happy to discuss. It can be very easily rebranded and we can offer some functional support for an agreed period of time.
Client organisations can engage their critical contractor resources safely via their chosen recruitment channels, with the unique, specific and robust outside IR35 credentials those contractors acquire with 34square membership. That means you can retain the services of the very best talent and you don't have to pay inflated inside IR35 rates.Read more here about addressing your wider risk exposure and not just an arguably only perceived and innocuous one: https://www.34square.com/blog/article/perceived-ir35-risk-avoidance-exposes-a-more-insidious-and-probable-risk-in-its-place.
Recruiters can help your client organisations to do just that, and develop your trusted advisor relationship, by introducing our unique capabilities into your engagement process.
Clients can perform a robust, simple-to-use, explicitly guidedIR35 assessment process and generate and store a detailed, equally explicit Status Determination Statement for each engagement. You can do it yourself, or ask your contractor or agent to send a completed one for your approval or refinement, or we can help you walk through it.
Contractor members of 34square can also render a Right of Substitution in your contract essentially unchallengeable even if you never utilise a substitute, with our ground-breaking substitution process, including an innovative legal contract process automation capability and an optional Right of Substitution Declaration, to be used only should the critical client need arise. Read more here.
Why are these factors SO critical?
Clients are legally obliged to take reasonable care in assessing the IR35 status of their contractors, and robust IR35 assessments and status determination statements are an instrumental component. Of course clients can just avoid those obligations and restrict their talent reach to those that will tolerate inside IR35 contracts. But think about it... notwithstanding the fact some contractors will have really felt they had no choice, which contractors can afford to hold out for or insist upon an Outside IR35 contract? Why not instead spend just a few minutes per resource and extend your reach to the FULL talent pool?
There are multiple paths to an outside IR35 status conclusion in our tool and a right of substitution is not obligatory in generating such a conclusion. However, a right of substitution is the singularly most powerful driver of an outside IR35 status. It's the LAW. Its presence obliterates any notion of the existence of a personal service, therefore rendering an engagement 100% a contract FOR SERVICES and outside IR35, and NOT a contract OF SERVICE akin to employment. There are those that will tell you it is a loophole or a sham and if you can't back it up with capability and intent, they'd be right. With 34square, you CAN, and they'd be wrong.
Right of Substitution is the first area HMRC attacks in any dispute. Out of 36 IR35 appeals tribunals we reviewed, 26 cases had weak rights of substitution, many with lines in contracts. In deliberation and witness testimony, HMRC is adept at breaking the right apart, either because the right is too restricted or fettered, or perhaps because witness testimony contradicts the contract content. Sometimes back to back contracts aren’t sufficiently aligned. Or it could simply be that there's insufficient evidence of any intent or capability. HMRC won 17 of those 26 cases with an absence of a strong right of substitution and/or feasibility to execute in line with their stipulations. Read the full blog about the power of 34square to immunise you from this HMRC attack.
Who We Help...
We can help client organisations that want to engage the best talent in the freelance contractor market. Safely engage your critical contract resources outside IR35, confidently complying with your compliance and reasonable care obligations under HMRC IR35 Off Payroll Working Rules. Resources we can help you be compliant with include:
Information technology contractors, including but not limited to software developers, functional consultants, cyber-security professionals
Quality and compliance professionals
Project and program managers and other project professionals
Business analysts and other business consultants
Locum doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals
HGV drivers, HGV mechanics, other freelance drivers and mechanics
Film set, TV and other media professionals, including cameramen
Freelance contractors in the construction industry
Here's What the Process Looks Like
Our Values
At 34square, we fully support the IR35 Off Payroll Working Rules. We aim to echo HMRC's efforts to ensure contractors are legitimately selling their services as businesses and are not disguised employees. We are perhaps a little more passionate than HMRC about preserving the rights of contractors to do so. We don't see ourselves as a way to combat or shield against the rules. We're an enabler, and we view IR35 as an enabler also. It's no accident that we don't have 'IR35' in our company name. And the 'square' in our name is a reference to a congregational outside space, not a geometric shape.
At our core, we're a legal contracts process automation service provider. We furnish subscribed contractors / freelance service providers with that innovative capability for their limited companies to honour their contractual obligations with clients even when a main worker is not able to be present. We acknowledge that contractors may rarely, some perhaps never, execute an actual substitution. Nevertheless, having the capability to generate contracts in a few minutes, with end-to-end original contract integrity for all parties and a legally binding contract between limited company and substitute that ensures the substitute is legally entitled to be paid by the worker's limited company, is a reassuring benefit for all involved, especially the client.
Our robust, guided IR35 assessment tool and process enables validation of the integrity of outside IR35 status and provides the ability to clearly demonstrate and evidence incontrovertible outside IR35 credentials. We have no interest whatsoever in supporting or assisting contractors to operate outside IR35 where there is no legitimate case to do so.
Fundamentally, we are committed to fuelling a thriving, compliant and credible outside IR35 channel for Personal Service Companies and for genuine freelance contractors that forego all of the security and protection of permanent employment the vast majority of people desire and covet, instead living day-by-day with the very real risks associated with running a business.
