IR35 didn’t take it away at all, it still thrives unless you’re skirting too close to employment. Contract software is still a huge thing in the UK.

It certainly needs reform, but it hasn’t killed the contracting sector. Far from it. It’s still massively lucrative.

Yes, the public sector restrictions a few years ago changed some things, but from friends in the public sector AFAICT what it changed was that it cut down on a culture of people who were for all intents and purposes employees, who had often been in positions of managerial responsibility in councils and other bodies for years, pretending they were independent businesses and avoiding tax while (comparatively) charging the earth.

However you want to paint it class -wise, when someone is acting as an officer in a company or council for half a decade, they’re not an independent creative struggling to have some control, they’re working a job like any other schmuck.

Honestly, I think the UK tax laws need to be reformed so that it doesn’t matter for income - you make money in a company structure as a contractor, or make it as an employee, tax is the same. Dividend or income, tax is the same. It would sort the unholy mess out and take away the incentives to use contracting as a tax dodge and for HMRC to retroactively fuck up someone’s life.

It’s how it works here in Australia. No IR35 required, for the most part income is income is income and it all counts towards your taxable total. Then you work how it best suits you.

The idea that IR35 only affected people "skirting too close to employment" is the exact narrative big consultancies wanted the public to believe. It reframes trust-based, long-term client relationships - the lifeblood of any good business - as suspicious when delivered by individuals, but completely acceptable when delivered by large firms.

Here's the reality: a one-person limited company providing services to a council for several years is treated as "dodgy" or "cheating the tax system." But if a big consultancy sends in a contractor to sit at the same desk for the same duration, it's completely exempt from IR35 scrutiny. The only difference? Ownership. The first is worker-owned, the second is not.

IR35 doesn't prevent "disguised employment." It just channels it through structures that protect and enrich corporate intermediaries. And those same intermediaries are often billing 2–3x the rate a direct contractor would charge—while extracting value from someone else's labour, then exporting the profits.

You also dismiss repeat clients as a sign of disguised employment - but by that logic, any successful small business with loyal customers should be disqualified from existing. Long-term client relationships are the goal of any serious enterprise. It's only when those relationships threaten the margins of large incumbents that they suddenly become suspect.

IR35 wasn't about fairness or tax efficiency. It was about reclaiming market share - removing small, independent operators who were too competitive, too flexible, and too accountable to clients, and replacing them with firms who could play the compliance game and charge more for less.

So no—IR35 didn’t just "clean up abuse." It entrenched it. It created a two-tier system where actual independence is punished, and corporate dependency is rewarded. That's not reform - that's capture.