IR35 Shield for Contractors

Protect your income from only £19.99 a month*

Unlimited IR35 assessments, helping you to stay compliant with IR35, combined with a tax investigation service to protect against HMRC investigations.

Find out more

IR35 Shield for Contractors - what's included?

Assessments
Unlimited

Legal Expert Fees
Discounted

Tax Investigation
Insured

Shield for Contractors membership provides unlimited IR35 assessments, helping you to stay compliant with IR35 legislation.

This includes unlimited IR35 compliance certificates and due diligence documents for outside IR35 contracts.

Enjoy our specialist Tax Investigation Service (including defence in a tax tribunal and £125,000 tax investigation insurance) to cover any costly defence of your outside IR35 status assessments in the event of an HMRC investigation.

* £19.99 per month membership subscription requires a minimum term of 5 months.

Read insurance details

FAQsor you can talk to us for more info

IR35

System

Security

Other

IR35 is tax avoidance legislation targeting ‘deemed employees’ - workers supplying their services to clients via an intermediary (such as a limited company) who would be classed as employees under employment law if not for the intermediary, and so should be taxed like employees.

Falling foul of the Act can lead to substantial costs in back taxes, fines and penalties and liability can now be traced to not only to your limited company, but also your agency or hirer. On top of this, falling within IR35 tax status means you could suffer a 20% decrease in net take-home pay.

These are the main factors affecting employment status, as per case law, and are based around the relationship between the contractor and the end hirer. IR35 Shield divides these into four - substitution, mutuality of obligation, control and other factors - and asks many detailed questions to accurately determine your employment status.

You can take an assessment as many times as you like. If you require the Staus Determination Statements, certificates and tax investigation insurance associated with these assessments, you need to purchase IR35 Shield for Contractors.

Our complex algorithms were built by industry-leading experts who have consulted with the Treasury on IR35. They are regularly refined in line with the latest IR35 tribunal case outcomes and regression tested for robustness against our extensive database of previously conducted assessments. So you get up-to-date employment legislation applied across every evaluation, without bias. Every time.

No. We do not send your data anywhere. If you are invited to take an assessment via an agency, accountant or other IR35 Shield client, your data will belong to the company that invited you. But if you complete your assessment using our IR35 Shield individual plan then the data is held securely in our servers and only you can access.

Tax law dictates that contracts in place as long as 20 years ago can be investigated. This means that IR35 Shield has carefully considered our data retention policies, which can be read about in our Terms and Conditions.

CEST only uses a basic checklist to determine status, rather than IR35 Shield’s highly complex weight-based algorithmic solution. IR35 Shield asks 101 questions, CEST asks 16. IR35 Shield has correctly predicted the status determinations of all previous IR35 tribunals; CEST was incorrect in over 30% of those tribunals. IR35 Shield gives a definitive determination on 98% of cases, CEST categorises 25% of cases as “indeterminate”.

A human expert would typically take 2-3 hours to deliver an assessment, charge hundreds of pounds, and could take days. Our solution will provide an accurate Status Determination Statement in 15 minutes, at any time of the day, for any number of concurrent assessments, and is not subject to human error or bias.

No. Our membership provides a tax investigation service which includes insurance for assessments completed either before or during the contract but it does not cover contracts completed before the assessment. We advise that you take membership for any new contracts, then take more assessments for your historic contracts and keep a copy of the assessments alongside your contracts. For extra peace of mind, try to get your previous clients to sign off historic assessments using the sign off sheet at the back of the Status Determination Statement.

Built by industry-leading experts, using complicated algorithms and utilising Amazon’s latest auto-scaling, serverless technology, IR35 Shield can assess thousands of contractors in a single day, evaluate them on a 19 point scale between outside and inside IR35, and generate a comprehensive Status Determination Statement for each individual. Our virtual IR35 lawyer puts the pieces together, stands back and evaluates the whole.

Annual Membership

Annual membership provides unlimited IR35 assessments, including all review packs to help turn your inside-IR35 contracts to outside-IR35 helping you to stay compliant with IR35 and achieve fair tax treatment.

This includes unlimited certificates and due diligence documents for outside IR35 contracts together with a full tax investigation service for ultimate protection.

Unlimited Assessments

Unlimited access to our industry-leading online assessment technology.

Unlimited Status Determination Statements

A Status Determination Statement is a comprehensive analysis of your IR35 status enabling you to understand the reasons for the status determination. The detailed Status Determination Statement proves you have conducted full due diligence and can strengthen your defence and disputes on status.

Unlimited IR35 Compliance Certificates

Confirm your determination to agencies and clients with this certificate and client sign off sheet. This evidence can help with a defence that the relevant contract is not caught within the IR35 legislation.

Tax Investigation Service

Discounted Legal Services

Get your contracts checked, amended if necessary, and verified as outside IR35 by one of our chosen IR35 legal experts. All for specially discounted member rates.

Annual Membership
Unlimited IR35 Compliance Documents + Insurance

£19.99 /month*

excluding VAT

Plan includes:

Unlimited Assessments

Unlimited Status Determination Statements

Unlimited IR35 Compliance Certificates

Tax Investigation Service Learn more

Discounted Contract Reviews

Easy, secure payment

We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and all major credit and debit cards.

more info about membership

Trusted by over 100,000 contractors

Protect your income from only £19.99 a month*

Unlimited IR35 assessments, helping you to stay compliant with IR35, combined with a tax investigation service to protect against HMRC investigations.

Protect your income from only £19.99 a month*