Previous efforts to stamp out bogus self-employment have had, as HMRC admits in this week's consultation, "no significant lasting effect on levels of false self-employment within the industry" These include a moratorium in 1997 which allowed people to switch to PAYE without being asked to pay back the income tax and Nl on their previous time spent falsely self-employed. It led to just 18,000 workers in the industry switching, and manyrnswitched back over the following few years.rnIn 1999 the government introduced the CIS card system, under which subcontractors must get a card by registering as self-employed with HMRC and employers must check the card before making gross payment. But the scheme's flaw was that employers had a financial motive to classify individual workers as self-employed to avoid payingrnNI contributions.
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