Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

IIUC, if that company had just let him be remote, and not demanded exclusivity, they could've gotten the same output, delivered at the same time, for less than 1/10th the cost.

One of the 'mistakes' (conscious at the time) I made when doing technical consulting remotely was only billing for productive, focused hours when I'd be actively typing and mousing on the problem.

Someone suggested that, if I wanted to go for a walk to think about a problem (which is something I did), I should bill that. I decided that was a slippery slope.

Had I been working on-site, which consumed all my time without flexibility, then I'd bill for every hour on-site, and maybe for travel time.

But since we were doing remote (this was before Covid), with hours that I set -- and my clients were serious people, working on serious stuff -- I wanted to be serious too.

View on HN

Thinking back to my time as a contractor, this makes me wary.

In the UK at least, you would need to be careful that by allowing people to waste your time (and them paying for it) you would be breaking the dreaded IR35 tax rules by appearing as a “disguised employee”.

HMRC won’t tell you the exact rules but one of big tests is do you retain control of your time or not.

You need to be upfront with clients about what they are paying for or you could both be in for a nasty surprise.

The IR35 rules seemed relatively easy for me to find when I was contracting.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/off-payroll-worki...

Along with a handy tool at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-employment-status-for-tax

There's also a forum, where they actually answer questions and advise (even if detailed).

It is a constant source of confusion. I see it constantly discussed in various freelancer whats-app and freelance groups.

I used to get contracts checked to see if they were Outside IR-35 and I knew I wasn't the only one. So it isn't straight-forward as you suggest.

It can also scare companies off, I have personally experienced this. As a result there are far less Outside IR-35 work. Almost every contractor I know has had to go back perm.

I understand there were many Contractors that basically milked forever contracts, but it kinda screwed over loads of freelancers.

I personally hate being perm. I used to work about 6-9 months a year and I found it relatively easy to find another contract. I had plenty of free time. Now I get the standard 1 month and bank holidays. Really pissed off about the rule changes.

The IRS in the USA has similar critera on the difference between a contractor and an employee, and it also boils down to who is dictating the time, place, and methods of the work.

Just the fact that they issued him a laptop and specific software would tend to indicate that he's an employee not a contractor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com