The IR35 accountant who reads the small print, not the headline.

There is a myth that you hire a special "IR35 accountant" the way you hire a plumber for a leak. What you actually need is a contractor accountant who treats IR35 as part of the job, not an afterthought, because off-payroll runs through everything: your status, your take-home, your structure and your records.

Most accountants are great with shops and trades, but contracting is its own world. Your income arrives as a day rate through a limited company, and the status question, inside or outside, decides far more about your tax than anything on your return. A generalist files last year and never asks it.

We work the other way round. We read your contract and your working practices, run the status tests properly, and plan ahead instead of just recording the past. We do not only file your numbers. We make sure the rules that decide them are working in your favour.

IR35, the off-payroll working rules, exists to stop someone working like an employee while being paid like a company. If HMRC decides you are really an employee in all but name, your engagement is "inside IR35" and most of that income is taxed close to employment, so the limited-company advantage largely disappears.

If your engagement is genuinely "outside IR35", you are running a real business: you can take a modest salary and the rest as dividends, and you control your own costs. The gap between inside and outside is not a rounding error, it is the single biggest factor in what you actually keep from the same day rate.

Crucially, inside or outside is not a label you choose. It depends on how the engagement really works. That is why we look past the headline rate at the substance of the contract, because that substance is what HMRC weighs if it ever asks.

This is where contractors get caught out. For a long time you assessed your own status. That is no longer true for many engagements.

When you contract for a public-sector body, or for a medium or large private-sector client, the end client now decides your status and must give you a Status Determination Statement explaining why. If you are engaged through an agency, the party paying you typically deducts tax and National Insurance before you ever see the money.

Only when your end client is genuinely small does the decision, and the tax risk, stay with your own limited company. So the same contractor can be assessed by the client on one contract and self-assessing on the next. We work out which regime applies to each engagement, so the right party carries the liability and you are not paying tax you do not owe.

Being inside IR35 on one contract does not make your limited company a waste of time. Most contractors run a mix: an inside engagement here, an outside one there, and the company still does real work on the outside contracts.

On inside work, your income is taxed broadly like employment through a deemed payment, but the company still gives you limited liability, a route for tax-efficient pension contributions, and a structure ready for the next outside contract. The mechanics differ depending on whether the client or your own company is operating the rules, which is exactly the sort of detail we keep straight for you.

We model your real engagement mix rather than assuming the worst, set your salary and dividends around the outside work, and make sure the inside income is handled correctly, so you are never taxed twice or caught short.

Through your company you can claim genuine business costs against profit, but only what is truly for the business, and the rules tighten when you work inside IR35, so claiming correctly matters.