Well I would suspect that you should be able to recruit a number of candidates if you promise to triple their salary
FWIW my last contract daily rate was 2.25 my current salary (average working days per year and all that).
When I was contracting I preferred to go umbrella company and pay the whole 9 yards of PAYE + employers and employees NI.
My motivation was around being able to walk away immediately and avoiding the big company mental HR.
The problem has been sort of self perpetuating, created by decades of permanent engineers going contract because the money is ludicrously better, meaning that there arenât enough permanent people available, leading to companies having to employ contractors.
Rinse, repeat, ad infinitum.
My last three years contracting was via an umbrella company it was very simple. The mileage expenses were very good and helped. The new IR35 rules have closed out that benefit. Having just read about it does appear to not cater well for those who need to stay in hotels and travel around. I blame the IT industry for taking the piss in years past.
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Pretty much what Iâve been saying.
A lot of companies are reluctant to invest in IT training/upgrades as technology develops. This leads to stagnation in systems, staff and skills. Hence when forced to upgrade or change IT systems, these same companies find themselves unable to meet the requirements with internal staff, and are forced to bring in contractors.
It would be nice to think that some will see the light and start investing properly in IT and staff again. However, in the coming years it is likely that the spread of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS along with the increasing automation of IT services will render many IT roles redundant. Both perm and contract will be affected, but it will hit the perm roles harder as companies will look to replace expensive humans with cheaper software.
I very much doubt I will be working in IT until retirement. I was permanent until a year ago, when the timely offer of a contract at a former employer led me to take a leap, and leave a job that was making me unhappy. My main motivation was escape, but the increase (doubling) of money means I can invest more in mine and my daughterâs future.
I was permy until late last year when i got VR. Iâm hoping the premium from contracting means I can work a permanent 4 day week without being (noticeably) worse off. At the moment I get that by doing all my hours monday - thursday, reducing my hotel to 4 nights (sun-weds) in the process. Ir35 would make this contract untenable because it costs me 400+ to be there (mileage + hotel) and IR35 stops me claiming expenses except a blanket 5% of something.
In my previous job, this role was not feasible as the client wouldnât (couldnât) pay the 900/day rate my employer would charge them. I wouldnât go permanent as Iâm not moving 200 miles away or paying to work away like that, they couldnât pay the salary i would want either, and the job has a finite (medium) duration and my skills would not be needed after that.
That is exactly how HMRC have always operated 
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The examples here show exactly what contracting had become, the opportunity to leave a permanent job for double (and more) the salary to improve your lifestyle.
No problem with that, at all, but why should you then expect to be given preferential tax treatment as well ?
IR35 isnât the answer, but nor is the current system.
Well as an employer I like the tightening up. Contractors are expensive and often (not always) lack a level of commitment to a project or the customer requirements
We have recently recruited a couple of excellent ex contractors who think ir35 will Impact their pockets so have gone perm.
We are also seeing a fair number of contractors go permanent but, I suspect, only because the contracts are drying up.
so doing some sums.
for someone on an 88K annual salary, they take home approx 57K and pay 31K in tax. The employer is paying an NI contribution of approx 12K for a total of 43K tax
A contractor on 60/hour with 450/week expenses (hotel, mileage, meals) they could pay themselves about 70K. They would pay the taxman 38K in tax.
However, the client of the contractor is paying out 60/hour 48 weeks a year whereas the employer of the staff person is paying nearer 80/hour 52 weeks a year (assuming double employeeâs hourly rate for sick, holiday provision, pension contribution, NI) so the client company will pay approx 8K extra corporation tax on the higher profit. For a total of 46K tax.
So from here it looks pretty even for the tax man. The client company gets a flexible resource at a lower cost, the contractor gets more money for taking on more risk and the taxman gets a decent wedge either way.
One purpose of IR35 was supposedly to protect people forced to work as self employed without a choice. Kitchen fitters, joiners etc, tied to one firm but made to class themselves as self employed to save the firm the money without getting a premium to cover their increased risks. Thatâs a laudable thing to do, but I wonder how much attention they will get?
Nope they get none of the employee perks or protections but have to be PAYE.
HMRC donât give a fuck about the employees rights or protections.
I have a business where we provide two closely related services, consulting and interim management. Depending on the clients situation the nature of the support could be either, so in some cases they want me to lead from the front as Director of X, and others to work alongside and mentor/ coach their existing team to get a specific thing done.
Under the new rules the NHS is increasingly classing interim roles as falling under IR35 and on that basis it is not commercially viable for me to do those roles and still be able to pay my own PAYE, Corp tax, professional and sickness insurance and so on, let alone the risk of downtime between roles where the business is not being paid.
That might seem fine, after all the NHS is committed to reduce the amount of money spent on contractors and consultants, which perhaps counter intuitively I agree with as most of it is poorly rendered and delivered.
The issue then is getting the necessary short term expertise in place at short notice becomes very difficult if individuals and businesses are not willing to take the roles under IR35 and bear the risk of subsequent downtime etc.
If I was being asked to bear the risk and the cost without adequate premiums then at some point Iâd just take a substantive Director role within a reasonable distance of home. But all my pension and financial planning has been aligned to being in a business, if I wanted an NHS pension instead I would have needed to have joined it a good while ago before the new rules.
What clients tell me is that if I and others stop providing flexible support, to help short/medium term crisis or other imperatives, then this to them is a bigger problem than the premiums I need to be able to offer this service.
Donât get me wrong, way back when I was an automotive engineer I was sick of seeing people quit on Friday and come back Monday as a contractor on 2-3 times my salary and with little uncertainty as vehicle development cycles were 3-5 years. That was just bollocks and I understand the frustration in working in that scenario. We just need to be careful not to wield tax and employment policy too bluntly so that is disadvantages other very different situations.
I donât think I know anybody earning ÂŁ80K+ perm, possibly not even ÂŁ75K,+ so the figures would be somewhat slewed.
Why should Hotel / Meals / Travel be allowed as expenses, when you choose to take a job where you need to pay them ?
I agree with an appropriate premium for skilled contractors but nobody can justify 200%+ and also expect preferential tax treatment.
Once again you are looking at it from your personal dislike, what about the people that donât have that choice?
Again, not everyone is a gravy train riding rich contractor
The client wants my skills. I canât provide them from home and I canât relocate for an indeterminate contract length so why shouldnât I get some relief on the costs of working at their location? It would cost them more if I couldnât get the tax back as my rate would have to go up, or the sums wouldnât add up.
The whole âleave friday and come back on twice as much on mondayâ thing isnât something you should blame the contractors for. Why wouldnât you take that opportunity? Ask why the firms thought it was a sensible move to let people they trained leave despite needing them for the work, and were prepared to pay a premium for their own staff? Iâd wager many of those staff would have stayed for a modest pay rise too.
Nobody who earned that much permanently would stay in Luton 
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Again, I donât have a personal dislike. I do, however, disagree with career contractors who change jobs every time an extra pound an hour is on offer and withtheir sense of absolute tax entitlement.
For people that genuinely donât have a choice, I 100% agree there need to be sensible allowances made.
For those who do have a choice and make it purely for financial gain (the overwhelming majority in the industry I know well) they will just have to live with the fact that the gravy train is being de-railed.
See, all the validation I need 