It was Benjamin Franklin who declared that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. It is probably a good thing that he never met the present day HMRC: recent events have shown that while we will be certain to be taxed, not even those on good old bog-standard PAYE can be certain exactly how much tax they are going to be asked to pay.

I finished last week by saying that we really need to start to think about how the contractor recruitment market needs to change if we are to get away from the commoditised, one-size-fits-all, dystopian model we are currently stuck with.

Another frustrating week in the hunt for the next contract. It’s clear that there is still a fair bit of work out there for the taking. Sadly it’s also clear that there are an awful lot of people out there trying to take it and competition is very strong.

You may recall a while back that Arctic Systems was major news. A case that was taken all the way to the House of Lords where, to the great relief of many, HMRC’s assertion that a husband and wife could not share the profits of their company was comprehensively thrown out.

August is traditionally a time when the Job Market goes into limbo. People are away on holiday, trade generally winds down, France stops completely and people are generally more relaxed than usual. Thing is, though, that this August is doing some strange things.

Back in 2002 I kicked off a bit of a debate about the Catch-22 situation regarding jobs that need people with security clearance. It’s a Catch-22 in that you can’t have clearance without the job and you can’t get the job if you haven’t got clearance.

Traditionally this is the Silly Season, when the Press have to file stories about singing sheep to fill the papers since there is no real news to talk about. But actually there are not one but two interesting stories to ponder this week.

Good to see the Coalition coming good on their promise of reviewing IR35. The announcement of the creation of the Office for Tax Simplification was rapidly followed by the publishing of its Terms of Reference. This made really good reading since they contained a specific statement of IR35 as a prime target for their review.

You have to feel sorry for the poor recruitment industry. I mean, after several years of being beaten up by the bean counters who run their business these days to improve throughput and efficiency, they finally get to the point where the process is as effortless as it’s going to get.

It’s been a fairly quiet week this week. There’s been nothing to get me throwing things at the TV or harrumphing over my breakfast newspaper. This is good in a way, of course, especially for the sake of the TV set, unless you have to try and find something interesting to write about…

Mostly people see the announcement in the Budget as a positive step forward, and even those who previously seemed to have found a new enthusiasm for IR35 seem to have gone quiet.

So where was I…? Back refreshed from two weeks of idleness in the sun, and already looking for the next contract. Don’t seem to have missed anything too serious while I was away.