Freedom to Freelance

New Edition Avaliable

2012-11-21T21:30:00.000+00:00

Freedom to Freelance has been revised for a new third edition. This third edition takes the story from the announcement of IR35 through to the end of the first judicial review.

It has been revised and re-proofed and the new edition also has an index too.

In celebration of National Freelancers' Day the paper back copy is on sale for only £9.99.

If you are interested in a kindle version it will follow later this week, but post me or email me rosspe at talk21.com if interested.

A story that needs telling...

2012-09-21T15:24:00.002+01:00

The story behind the PCG and the campaign is a great one and one that needed telling. So many great things happened in the campaign and it was a real pioneering story.

A have had a couple of emails from people outside the contracting world and they really enjoyed the story. People often comment on how long the book, that it looks like a lot to read.

So I am planning to push people more towards the first half of the book which I have launched as 'beginning the fight against IR35'. I am revising this book - which is basically parts 1-3 to allow it stand more on its own.

Then time-allowing I will take parts 4-8 and launch as a second book.

Secret critics....

2012-09-19T17:08:00.003+01:00

When I published the book, I knew that it wouldn't please everyone. The first week of publication saw threats of legal action against me and that was before people had even read the book. I had to disappoint one such person by telling them not to worry because they were hardly mentioned in the book. Though this seemed to make them more cross.

The book does of course criticise the 'secret' pedants in the PCG who have hidden behind usernames.
I found this post on the accountingweb site from an unknown person

"A very large pinch of salt ... Particularly in respect of Mr Ross's Kalnienk Vision when looking away from his rose tinted mirror, in my humble opinion.

I know a few of the people that are mentioned in the book and who seem to have a very different recollection. To attempt to write a history of the PCG without actually interviewing any of the people involved isn't a history, it's a self-opinioned diary. Again IMHO."

My reply was :-

It is true that I didn't attempt to interview the former Paymaster General or Gordon Brown for that matter. The story is based around what happen with contemporary news articles from the time and details about what happened to me when I was campaigning. The key characters in the story are those who played a significant role - Andy White for one. I haven't talked in detail to the minor characters as I didn't need to, nor did I interview Andy I didn't have to because I was there. I know that some people are disappointed that they aren't in it more than they are. Also I am not sure what these different recollections are but would be interested to hear them, but these are my memoirs of the campaign, and that is it my story of the campaign.

...an interesting, even enthralling, account of “people power”

2012-08-28T13:11:00.004+01:00

James Webb writing for AccountingWeb says

The book details the PCG’s history, from its infancy as the first true online trade association right through to the present day incarnation of the organisation, with particular focus on the group’s historic and impressive battle against legislation which it saw as unworkable and ill-conceived.

Regardless of the reader’s personal political persuasions, it is impossible to come away from this account believing that the proposed IR35 legislation was anything other than a catastrophic failure. Indeed, subsequent governments and administrations are yet to come up with a just and fair method of determining whether a contractor is caught by the legislation, and the issue is really no further forward than it was 15 years ago.

The reader is left with little doubt over the author’s passion and enthusiasm for his topic and it is clear that he has become something of an expert in the history and relevance of the IR35 legislation. As such, this is an interesting, even enthralling, account of “people power” and a community’s refusal to be subjected to unfair legislation written by people who did not understand their industry.

See http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/article/book-review-freedom-freelance/530845

Positive reviews...

2012-08-20T11:01:00.001+01:00

Freedom to Freelance has been positively reviewed by Gail Purvis for AccountingWeb.

See: http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/article/ir35-review-practical-contractors-and-personal-freelance/530510

She writes :

'Freedom to Freelance' writes Philip Ross (contributor to Shout99.com) is a story of how a group of plucky IT contractors banded together and took on the government. It is a story of sacrifice and endeavour, of valour and of many great deeds and successes - one of the first examples of crowd funding High Court drama, the biggest post-1997 lobby on parliament, which many have described as the world's first flash mob and first e-petition presented to parliament, and perhaps the only ever on-air apology transmitted on Newsnight.

It also covers two campaigns: That of the IR35 direct confrontation and the second use of more gentle persuasion and diplomacy to defeat fast track visas.

This is a first person account “my story of my time with the PCG and considers the period between 1999 and 2002, at the heart of the campaign, when I believed in the cause." The biggest irony of IR35 is that a poll taken just after its release, showed the majority of those affected had elected new Labour in 1997.

The other sad, but somehow inevitable irony as is often the case with revolutions, the group turned on itself - and the leading figures ultimately replaced by more establishment characters and attempts at rewriting history.

The chapters cover the forming of the PCG, the parliamentary battle, the judicial review, political engagement, fast track visas, agency regulations, appeal and case law, thermidor and the epilogue - 10 years on when Ross now is a UCL visiting lecturer and works for enterprise architecture consultancy Alpheus in which he is shareholder. No longer a contractor, he still claims commitment to the cause.

With an Appendix of Nominations for the New Statesman Award emails collected at the time; 56 brief biographies in the Who's Who, and a 22 organisation glossary in Freedom and a last chapter on Growing your Business in theHandbook all a reviewer can conclude is that future editions of both invaluably interesting books should indulge themselves by hiring a librarian contractor or freelance and creating indexes!

Reviewers wanted...

2012-08-02T16:35:00.000+01:00

Interested in reviewing the book?

The book is in the process of being reviewed by various different groups, but I would be interested in a contractors review either by someone who was there at the time and to someone coming to it afresh.

Let me know if interested...

rosspe at talk21.com

Taster Kindle versions

2012-07-12T09:59:00.000+01:00

A low cost copy of the book - as a taster - has been made available on Kindle for £1.53. (It is the minimum price that Kindle will let me retail it for). The full book is of eight parts, but I have put part 1 out as a kindle version for people to try. (I have also put together a kindle version of the first three parts of the book, which is about half of it).

Link to Kindle

Part one covers the announcement of IR35 and the formation of the PCG.

PART 1 - FORMING THE PCG

Chapter 1

Becoming a contractor

But why go contracting?

Chapter 2

Budget Day 9th March 1999

IR35: Press Release – 9 March 1999

Engineerjob.com

No sympathy for contractors

Red Dawn

Chapter 3

The Revenue gets their way after all

The British Computer Society

Travel Allowances

BCS when IR35 broke

Chapter 4

Fairness in the Tax System

1981 – PRIDE

The Architects of Doom

Why don’t contractors work as self-employed?

Chapter 5

United we stand?

Recruitment Industry led alliance

An industry alliance against the tax?

Enquiries to the Inland Revenue

Chapter 6

22nd April 1999 – The full plans laid open

Speaking up for contractors

Creation of the Professional Contractors Group:

Some choice quotes from the book...

2012-07-06T11:40:00.001+01:00

I have being putting together some choice quotes from the book which I include below. To see them in context you will need to read the book which I hope you enjoy.

What MPs and the Government said

"I think you're quite a vocal lot and have seriously terrified figures in Whitehall." Lord Haskins (Labour Peer and Head of the Better Regulation Task Force)

"The second congratulations are due to the Professional Contractors Group. I have never encountered such a literate, persuasive series of letters. Ministers have received something like 2,000 letters. I have received many dozens. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has received a number. They are literate, well spelt, well argued, persuasive letters (and wrong)" Lord McIntosh (Labour Peer)to the Lords

“The hon. Gentleman should explain why he is prepared to support a group of workers whose companies their own advisers describe as tax havens. Why should they be allowed to continue to cheat honest taxpayers?” Dawn Primarolo MP (Paymaster General) to Parliament

What the other institutions and business said

"We have awarded the new personal service company rules a score of 30 out of 100. This is a poor result". Francesca Largerberg ICAEW

"The Tax Faculty believes that the IR35 proposals are fundamentally unfair. We believe the rules affecting personal service companies are unnecessary". Tax Faculty

"Andy [White] deserved a special mention in the Elected Representative Awards. Even though this was intended for MPs, MSPs and councillors, such was the depth of support for Andy that we felt that his sterling effort to show what would happen with IR35 deserved to be recognised". New Statesman New Media Awards Judge

"I’m a very strong admirer of what you have done and I am very keen to see you do even more in the immediate future." Sir John Harvey-Jones

What we said

"[IR35] fails to understand that knowledge and skills are commodities that are traded today just as manufactured goods have been traded in the past". Philip Ross - to the Labour Conference

"The members of PCG did more than talk about the injustice of it - they formed a group, put their hands in their pockets and sent a message to the Government saying ‘we’re not going to take this, we’re going to do more about it than moan, you’ve got a fight on your hands and we’re not going away". Andy White PCG Founder

Share the story...

2012-07-05T16:37:00.001+01:00

People have asked me why I have written this book and I have said that it is a great story that needed to be told.

It is also a case of sharing it and recording it. Thousands of us took part of the battle against IR35 and I felt that it was important to record what happened, how it happened and why it happened.

I am happy to be able to celebrate the founding of the PCG on the internet and the innovation of the campaign as events on their own.

So far people have told they have bought the book because they were there and wanted to celebrate that and secondly to learn about what happened and get a greater background to IR35.

I would interested to hear people's memories about the campaign and what happened

Trailer video

2012-07-03T10:18:00.001+01:00

Trailer video, watch to find out about the book

IR35? An unsympathetic Government? Tests that might not work? 2012? No 1999

2012-07-02T15:42:00.000+01:00

IR35? An unsympathetic Government? Tests that might not work? 2012? No 1999. A new book ‘Freedom to Freelance’ has been published by Philip Ross that tells the story of the introduction of IR35 and the early ground breaking and pioneering campaign that was fought against it. It was one of the first true internet campaigns and was ground breaking in its use of the new technology and on-line communities. Philip Ross was the PCG’s first director of external affairs, and therefore experienced the IR35 saga in first hand and describes his book as “a great story that needs to be told’.

The book explains that IR35 was a significant piece of tax legislation that the 1999Budget estimated would raise around £450-£900m a year in revenue, but it didn't get a mention in the budget speech, instead it was relegated to Inland Revenue press release 35 - or IR35. The press release and commentary around suggested that the target was ‘kitchen fitters’ and workers who left their jobs on Friday's only to return on Monday as freelancers. In actual fact its target was freelance IT workers. It took a while for anyone to find it, but once they did news about it spread like wild fire.

At the time one of the very few working communities that was connected to both the internet and email were IT workers. The key information site they all settled on was one run by ex-contractor Andy White. Overwhelmed by the traffic and requests for information Andy White formulated a business plan and put it to his mailing list. If he could raise £100,000 in six days then they could run a campaign. 2,002 contractors pledged £50 and so the campaign and the Professional Contractors Group was formed.

Armed with resources White hired in both a public affairs expert and press officer and accounting expertise and contractors flocked to the standard as they began their campaign in earnest against the Government. They setup up ground breaking on-line communities they were able to collectively pool their technical and analytical expertise. They battled their way to the negotiating table to provide a genuine representative voice for contractors. They exposed the fact that the Government has failed in its statutory duty to write a Regulatory Risk Assessment for the new tax. When the Government hastily produced one they shot so many holes in it that the Government had to rewrite it. The Government then did themselves no credit when they admitted in Parliament that the tax was being introduced to help bigger companies and they were red faced when it was exposed that they had been holding secret meetings about it with them.

Suddenly this obscure tax was now on the front pages of national newspapers and was discussed in the financial columns and was like a rash all over the trade press. The Government position buckled. As the PCG were bringing down the intellectual weight of the Adam Smith Institute on them they announced that they were reforming their proposals. Instead of modelling IR35 on the tax for construction workers and making agencies collect the taxes, they changed to model the tax on self-employment law and let contractors keep their limited company structures. This sounded good on paper but tax and employment specialists pointed out that little case law existed for the modern knowledge based worker who instead of doing manual labour using their own spanners and wenches used someone else’s software and their intellectual capital.

The Labour conference saw a speech from the floor that shocked delegates when it explained the workings of IR35 and the Government’s own figures that 66,000 businesses would close down. The ICAEW and other tax and small business bodies would condemn the tax and asked the Government to think again, but the Government remained both furious and steadfast in their determination to implement it with no further compromises.

The House of Lords though saw it differently and rejected the legislation and when the Paymaster General chose to reintroduce it unchanged the response of the PCG was a ‘call to arms’ and a ringing of the metaphorical tocsin bell, which in reality was 10,000 emails calling on people to come and lobby Parliament. 1,000 came to lobby their MPs, much to the annoyance of the Parliamentary authorities in one of the first ever internet driven flash style mobs.

Unfortunately the bill was still passed. Weeks later the PCG were in the news again when their members came together to present the first ever e-petition to Parliament. They then lodge papers in the High Court to fight the tax and raised £500,000 on-line to fight the case and highlighted the fact that IR35 was causing a brain drain of contractors leaving the country. The Government’s refused to accept that contractors had to use limited companies and their response was to declare to Parliament that contractors were tax cheats because they used limited companies that they had bought off the shelf. They also establish a new ‘fast track visa’ system to bring in cheaper workers from overseas. The Goverment attempt to discredit the tax through a Newsnight story, but in response PCG individual overwhelmed the BBC so much so that the next day Evan Davis made an on-air apology to Newsnight viewers for getting their facts wrong.

Meanwhile Andy White had turned the PCG into mutual organisation that would be owned by its members and a new constitution had been drafted and agreed and a board of directors and a council elected.

At the judicial review the Judge would issue an early warning when he told the court that it was not for him to judge on the fairness of correctness of the tax but only whether it was legal or not. Despite hearing about how badly thought out and implemented the tax was, and even though he may have agreed it was not fair, he declared that it wasn’t illegal and so dismissed the PCG’s case.

The case shook the PCG and dented their confidence. Andy White who had taken a background role returned to the helm as the PCG discovered that while they had been challenging IR35 other Government plans also threatened the livelihoods of contractors. One was the aforementioned fast track visa scheme which instead of being used to fill skills gaps and vacancies was being used by firms to replace UK freelancers with foreign workers willing to work at lower cost. Second, legislation around the new Recruitment Agencies Act threatened to reclassify contractors as temporary workers.

Mutual respect between the Government and the PCG had emerged, senior Labour Lord Haskins declared that the PCG had ‘seriously terrified figures in Whitehall’. Andy White and his team engaged Parliament and Government constructively joining Parliamentary groups and so successful dismantled the fast track visa scheme in a text book campaign and for the agency act they successfully persuaded the DTi to detach contractors from it.

The IR35 judgement had gone to further appeal at the High Court, but again it had been defeated and they ha d been unable to raise sufficient funds for a House of Lords appeal and a referral to the European court. So unable to stop the legislation going on the statute books or to have it declared illegal the PCG had to rethink its strategy. Instead of one knock out blow it would have to defeat the tax through case law.

A difficult argument ensured with Andy White and others arguing for tough contractor insurance and a willingness to continue to fight every case. Others wanted to be more selective about what was fought. Also the PCG now had over 14,000 members and some wanted to consolidate its position as a traditional trade association providing services to its members. The end result was that Andy White and his team left in 2002 and PCG pursued a new course. Thirteen years on the campaign against IR35 is still being fought both by the PCG and by contractors themselves armed with tough insurance and good advice.

Overall the story is on not just of an on-line revolution but of a classic revolution too with the drama of political and personal conflicts both against the Government and within the PCG. The book declares that the campaign ad formation of the PCG were revolutionary in nature it draws parallels with historical revolutions for both good and bad and in particular that the founders of such movements are often victims of it. The book has therefore proved popular with political scientists and social scientists looking at the births of new media. As well as with the contractors who were part of it.

In short ‘Freedom to Freedom’ it tells the story not just of the fight against a tax measure but a contemporary and gripping tale of a birth of internet campaigning, which try as it might through on-line forums and sophisticated tools cannot escape its destiny to be a classic human tale.

Looking back...

2012-06-29T11:54:00.000+01:00

Having now published the book and spoken to countless numbers of people about it is becoming clearer how significant the campaign was in 1999-2002. The contractors campaign was very much one of the godfather internet campaigns, no one had done anything like it before.

What I didn't realise was that the story goes beyond contracting and contractors. It is a story about the fight against IR35, but it is more than that. There is also a great deal of understandable pride from those who took part in campaign.

It is not about today's PCG, this story ended 10 years ago, but it is about how the story began and I hope todays PCGers will read it, celebrate it and learn from it.

Click here to buy a copy

Reaction so far

2012-06-24T18:33:00.001+01:00

Since I announced the publication of the book last week it has caused quite a reaction. I said that I think it is a story worth telling because I want to celebrate contracting and the role of the PCG and of contractors in the fight against IR35.

It seems to generated a lot of concern though, about what I might be saying. An early email I received from a leading PCG member which copied in the PCG CEO warned me that it might be illegal to publish the book and that it was perhaps a story best left untold.

All this before they had even read the book. I hate to think what Dawn Primarolo will make of it.

I was warned that for some people this isn't a book that they would want written. I told shout99.com that I expected the following to happen :-

1) they will criticise how it is written
2) they will criticise what it says
3) they will criticise why it was written
and finally
4) they will criticise who has written it

So far it is holding firm to this list. I have had my legal team on standby and when when on Saturday morning the postman rang the door bell at 7:45am, I though here it is - the summons etc.

But no, it was actually my Olympic tickets!

I have put up a new edition on Saturday. I have rewritten some of the commentary around the judicial review hearings. Instead of using articles published by Shout99.com I have done them as commentary, quoting from those articles and also similar articles done by other reporters.

Freedom to Freelance - available now

2012-06-15T16:13:00.003+01:00

'Freedom to Freelance' tells the story of the fight against IR35, the creation of first online trade association and the ground-breaking use of the internet to run the campaign.

The events are chronicled by Philip Ross who was one of the founder members of the Professional Contractors Group (PCG) and its first Director of External Affairs. As such he is uniquely positioned to tell the story from the inside - with the highs and the lows, the successes and failures, the conflicts and the characters.

Throughout the book, he draws parallels with other revolutions throughout history, from its brave and bold beginnings to the final stages when the revolution turned on the revolutionaries.

In the early stages, contractors banded together against a common enemy, IR35. This story dates from 1999, when discussion forums were in their infancy and technology as a means of communication was the domain of geeks and IT experts - the very people who the Government had targeted with IR35. Many of these contractors were at the cutting edge of technology and their communication method of choice was the internet. Their campaign and mode of operation were pushing back the barriers for the innovative use of technology on an almost daily basis.

Philip tells the story of the birth of the Professional Contractors Group, (the PCG), Britain’s first online trade association, which battled the Inland Revenue over IR35 and then the Home Office over the issue of Work Permits. It would win over the House of Lords who controversially reject the IR35 proposals, it would organise the first ever 'flash mob' to lobby Parliament and then be the first to present an e-petition, the group would pressure the BBC’s flagship political programme Newsnight into transmitting an apology on air for getting its facts wrong, they would take the Government all the way to the High Court and the Court of Appeal, and grow their organisation from zero to thousands in a matter of weeks.

Philip explores the online revolution and the figures who had the vision to lead it and pursue it. As is often the case with revolutions, the group turned on itself - and those leading figures were ultimately replaced by more establishment characters and attempts were made at rewriting history.

Copy your copy from :

http://www.lulu.com/shop/philip-ross/freedom-to-freelancethe-fight-against-ir35/paperback/product-20199987.html

Final Draft

2012-06-11T12:22:00.004+01:00

I have completed the final draft of the book.
It is a great story that needs to be told, it is not just about the fight against IR35, but it is a story of an on-line revolution.

It is as much a human drama as it is about anything else.

That is part of my motivation, the other part is to put the record straight about what happened and how it happened. The founders of the PCG seemed to have been air brushed out of the history and I wanted to paint them back in again. Given all the recent news about IR35, it is interesting to note the complaint about the PCG then was that we "fought too hard."

It has taken a long time to write and I have tried to be fair and always truthful and talk openly about what happened, how it happened and why it happened.
I have had to weigh up the costs of publication and the costs of writing it and the likely sales I may generate.

So I have decided to use Lulu.com for publication which prints copies on demand. This means that the list price is slightly higher but it means that I need little infrastructure to distribute the book.
Basically I don't need to use an agent, which is something all contractors will appreciate.

2012-04-02T16:15:00.001+01:00

It is the start of April and we are designing the book cover and working on final edits and grammar checking.
Fortunately I have help with this.

I see it as a sort of genuine contractors project as I haven't used an agent.