Holmes under the hammer

IR35 has claimed its first big name, after Eamonn Holmes failed to convince the courts he’s a freelancer in his case against HMRC.

For the humble freelancer, the introduction of the kaleidoscopic IR35 legislation has seen the rules of what does and doesn’t constitute self-employment thrown up in the air. For us, it’s added to our suspicion that nobody – least of all that random new man on his work placement as chancellor – knows what they’re doing.

Right from our first encounter with the concept of tax, hearing Adam Hart-Davis’s ingratiating recital of the Inland Revenue’s “tax doesn’t have to be taxing” slogan, we always got the impression he wasn’t imparting the full story. And lo and behold, to a nation of – how to put this politely – cloven-hoofed, money-grubbing pigs who don’t think they should pay any tax at all, the idea of potentially being taxed quite unfairly has gone down like a lead balloon.

Yet, undeterred – and still seething from Lorraine Kelly using her decades of disingenuousness to escape its charges, HMRC has come for a second swing at the ITV Daytime programming block.

We asked Computer Weekly’s resident IR35 expert Caroline Donnelly to shed some light on Eamonn Holmes. “There was no mention of the case on his Twitter feed yesterday,” she said. “Instead, he was sharing his love for Tayto crisps.”