HMRC has announced that it has commenced the first stage of updating its Check Employment Status for Tax Tool (CEST).
This is the tool that taxpayers use to determine their employment status; in other words, are they an employee or self-employed?
The changes only appear to be to the hosting platform and a few amendments to simplify the tool.
There have not been any changes to the questions or the logic.
The key changes are
Users can now review their answers after each section rather than all at the end.
Guidance is now embedded into the tool so that users can read it as they complete the section.
There will be much more feedback on the reason for the decision reached.
We think that the really important changes won’t be happening until the second stage of the update.
