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Comment by yladiz | Hacker News Reader

As someone not from the UK: What is zero rights employment, and how is it different than before?

It's not a special employment status. As a contractor in the UK you have fewer rights (pensions, notice periods, unfair dismissal, etc.) than an employee, but used to have not-inconsiderable tax benefits to trade off against this.

Thanks to HMRC reforms known as IR35, a lot of contractors are now considered akin to "disguised employees" and taxed as such - thus being taxed like an employee without the requisite legal benefits.

Contractors have a tendency to frame the gradual clamping down on their lucrative tax loopholes in hyperbolic self-pitying ways like this. Pretty savvy I guess.

The net result is not so much that the loopholes have gone away, but that the contracts have. Employers are refusing to engage with the new IR35 system rather than risk getting on the wrong side of HMRC.

There is a subtle change however that makes huge difference. Companies now can make anyone a contractor (deemed employee) as now the company decides about status and essentially create a workforce without any worker's rights. The "not-inconsiderable" tax benefits ended around 2017.

> Companies now can make anyone a contractor

I don't think that's true. If you are enrolled on PAYE they can't just change you to a contractor.

They can do that, it's called "fire and re-hire". The PAYE position ends and new contract position starts, that you can take or leave.

Example: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/28/a-kick-in-t...

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