Tax situation after April 2020

[Lance]

In my many years of contracting, I've never met anyone who effectively ran a business as you say, they were all effectively disguised employees.

Not in my experience.
Clients want short term specialist skills to deliver a project.
- one that's too difficult
- one they can't resource as they're busy
- one that has skills they don't need for BAU
- one that is so controversial they want externals to blame afterwards

Then again, I do project work only.
If you're a bum on seat BAU engineer, programmer, analyst, etc then you'll only ever find clients who want what you describe.

[JohntheBike]

Not in my experience.
Clients want short term specialist skills to deliver a project.
- one that's too difficult
- one they can't resource as they're busy
- one that has skills they don't need for BAU
- one that is so controversial they want externals to blame afterwards

Then again, I do project work only.
If you're a bum on seat BAU engineer, programmer, analyst, etc then you'll only ever find clients who want what you describe.

"BAU engineer, programmer, analyst, etc "

exactly, and there are many of us who are required to work this way through Ltd companies, as required by the clients, not us. I've never been out of contract in over 20 years of contracting, so there is clearly a demand for such services.

I've never been involved in project work as such, since contracting. Even in my permie days, when I did develop applications, the staffing structures were such that those who developed the applications also supported them.

It seems the norm these days for those two functions to be separated, to such an extent that if the application needs any changes or fixes, these are not done and workarounds are found as the support staff don't have the skills to develop those changes or fixes. But this is only my experience with dealing with offshore support teams.