Choose a plan that's right for you
Free employment status assessments, or the many benefits of membership, IR35 Shield has the compliance solution to keep you protected.
Single IR35 Assessment
Get your free employment status then purchase a Status Determination Statement to be fully compliant.
Membership
For contractors wanting unlimited access to a fast and fair IR35 compliance service.
Why use IR35 Shield for Contractors membership?
- Unlimited assessments
- Instant, unlimited determinations
- Tax Investigation Service, including £125k tax investigation insurance
- Discounted contract reviews
- A robust IR35 compliance process
- One-to-one clinics with an IR35 expert
- Exclusive members-only content
- Trusted by over 100,000 contractors
See all features Let's see how the plans compare
| Feature | SingleAssessment | Membership |
|---|---|---|
| Industry standard IR35 compliance | ||
| IR35 assessments | Unlimited (free) | Unlimited (free) |
| Status Determination Statements | Single (£99.99) | Unlimited (free) |
| Tax Investigation Service | ||
| Tax Investigation Insurance of £125,000 | ||
| Discounted contract reviews | ||
| Dashboard | ||
| One-to-one clinics | ||
| Exclusive content |
Trusted by over 100,000 contractors
In case you're wondering Here's some FAQs, or 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 employment status for tax purposes, 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 employment 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 tax investigation 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.