2022 was turning into a good year for work. I had just secured a working from home opportunity for a well known UK based insurance company. Turns out they had just recently offered the majority of their in house development team early retirement. The ones that were left to pick up the pieces had too much work to handle updating Drupal to the latest version and this was the primary reason I was being brought in.
The terms Freelancing and Contracting are often used interchangeably in the workplace. Perhaps a project requires a specific skillset to help complete a project or assignment. Perhaps the Project Manager can be over heard telling the Finance Director, "Oh, we need to get a freelancer in".
For those people who have been contracting IR35 is nothing new. IR35 was first introduced in 2000 by then chancellor Gordon Brown in an attempt to close the tax avoidance schemes that many contractors were encouraged to sign up for. This included certain "personal service companies" that employed various schemes to avoid paying NI and Income Tax.
I have been working as a Web Developer since 2001. Until a couple of years ago I have worked as a contractor in a number of roles thanks in part to the army of Recruitment Consultants who are registered on the job boards gaining access and to my credentials and matching me with possible opportunities, arranging interviews and setting up contracts and of course making sure you get paid for the work that you do.