This was very much about 'making work pay' and aiming to improve productivity. Important though national insurance tax reductions are to help sole traders and partnerships, they do nothing to help those caught by frozen thresholds or running small limited companies.

Sole traders and partners

With Class 2 national insurance abolished and Class 4 national insurance reduced by 1% from April 2024 but dividend tax unchanged, more businesses may decide to remain as sole traders rather than incorporate or even prefer to disincorporate.

When you add in that the cash basis will become the default way to measure tax profits from April 2024 (for any size sole trader) together with the previously known companies house reforms requiring more company information to be made public, the government clearly wants small businesses to stay as sole traders unless they're large enough to embrace being a limited company in full.

This week we heard about a new 1.25% tax to fund health and social care, but as only £5.4bn of the £36bn raised over the next 3 years will be spent on social care, this seems to be another tax 'pot' such as national insurance and income tax from which to fund the NHS.

Unfortunately, tax simplicity and clarity is something we never see from governments making it harder for everyone, including HMRC, to understand the tax system. So how might you respond?

Dear HMRC 

As the sun rises on a new decade, let's try to achieve real tax simplification during the next 10 years. Here are a few ideas to help make tax understandable for the public:

It's important to remember that many recent employment law cases ruled on employment law. There's no requirement for HMRC to follow these findings for tax purposes but you expect they'll be reviewing their position.

Along similar lines, there have been some recent HMRC 'IR35 status' tribunal cases where (usually) one-person limited companies have had mixed success as to whether they are an employee of their clients.