IR35 news: what has changed, what was reversed, and what applies today

Changes to IR35: the state of the rules, and how to keep track

1. The rules exist and are current. GOV.UK's guidance Understanding off-payroll working (IR35) was published on 22 August 2019 and, read on 10 September 2026, was last updated on 26 February 2026. The rules described there are the ones that apply: a worker providing services through their own intermediary who would otherwise have been an employee is taxed broadly as one.
2. Repeal was announced once and reversed. The 2017 and 2021 reforms that moved the determination to public sector and then to medium and large private sector clients were announced for repeal in September 2022 and that announcement was withdrawn the following month. Contractors who planned around the repeal spent a month planning around nothing, which is the lesson.
3. What did change: the offset. Where a deemed employer is found liable for a wrongly determined engagement, taxes already paid by the worker and their intermediary on the same income can be set against that liability rather than being collected twice. It changes the size of the exposure for clients, which changes their appetite for outside determinations.
4. Small clients are the enduring exception. The split between small clients and medium or large ones is the structural feature to track, because it decides who determines your status. Client size is read from company law thresholds, and those thresholds have been raised, which moves some clients out of the reformed regime entirely.
5. Check the guidance, not the commentary. The GOV.UK pages carry a published date, a last-updated date and a see-all-updates link, which makes them the only source worth relying on for what applies today. This page states when it was read; treat anything undated, here or elsewhere, as history.

Common questions

Has the IR35 reform been scrapped?

No. A repeal of the 2017 and 2021 reforms was announced in September 2022 and withdrawn in October 2022, and the guidance remains in force: read on 10 September 2026 it was last updated on 26 February 2026.

When did IR35 come into effect?

The original intermediaries legislation dates from 2000. The reform that moved the determination to the client applied to the public sector from 2017 and to medium and large private sector clients from April 2021, and that is the regime most contractors mean by IR35 today.

What is the offset and why does it matter to me?

It lets tax already paid by you and your company on the same income be set against a deemed employer's liability if a determination is later found wrong. It reduces the client's worst case, which in practice makes some clients less reflexively cautious about outside determinations.

How do I keep up with the IR35 regulations without reading the news?

Watch two things: whether your client is small or medium/large under the company law thresholds, and the last-updated date on the GOV.UK off-payroll guidance. Everything else is commentary until one of those changes.

Is a small client IR35 exempt?

From the reformed regime, yes: where the client is small under the company law thresholds, it does not determine your status, and the original rules apply with your own intermediary deciding its position. The rules themselves still apply to the engagement, and because the thresholds have been raised, some clients have moved out of the reformed regime entirely.

Take-home pay by jurisdiction

• Take-home pay in United Kingdom