Free first call
What you need, and whether consultancy is the right instrument.
Tewkesbury · Owner-managed and mid-sized businesses
Your IR35 call,
Your IR35 call,
your liability.
If you are a medium or large business, you determine whether an engagement sits inside the off-payroll rules — and you can carry the tax if you get it wrong without taking reasonable care. A blanket determination is not compliance.
- 2018trading since
- SDSsupported
- Scopein writing
- Nohierarchy role
What we do
Four services, scoped to be determinable
Defined deliverables under our own methods, with the facts a status determination needs documented.
Strategy and planning
Clarifying direction and the realistic options, with the assumptions written separately.
See the programOperations and process
Examining how work actually flows and proposing something that survives us leaving.
See the programProgramme delivery
Running a programme or project to defined milestones, with changes reported as they happen.
See the programAdvisory support
Ongoing advisory support, with regulated and reserved matters sent elsewhere.
See the program
How it works
How we work
Contract for defined outputs rather than instructed hours, document the facts a status determination needs, keep out of the client's hierarchy, disclose conflicts, and refer regulated matters out.
Written scope
Deliverables, milestones, fees and exclusions.
Status facts documented
So an off-payroll determination can be made honestly.
Delivered and reported
Changes flagged rather than absorbed.
Working together
Ways to work with us
Quoted per engagement or per programme after a free first call. We do not charge for referring you to a regulated professional.
A defined piece of work
One question, scoped and delivered.
- Deliverables written first
- Assumptions stated separately
- Fixed fee agreed
- Exclusions named
- Status facts documented
Programme or advisory
A programme to run, or regular advisory support.
- Written mandate and authority
- Scope changes reported
- No role in your hierarchy
- Conflicts disclosed
- Reviewed each quarter
What we will not do
Said plainly, because the liability is yours too.
- No instructed hours under supervision
- No blanket IR35 assumptions
- No investment advice: FCA
- No reserved legal activities
- No accounts, tax or audit
Every engagement is quoted after a free consultation. No subscription.
How we work
A consultancy that helps you make the status call
Terra Albion Ltd is a private limited company registered in England and Wales under company number 11741325, based at Overbury near Tewkesbury and trading since December 2018 under the same director. The work is management consultancy other than financial management: strategy and planning, operations and process, programme delivery and advisory support.
The British wrinkle worth raising early is the off-payroll working rules. If you are a medium or large private sector organisation, you are responsible for determining whether an engagement falls inside those rules, you must take reasonable care in doing so, and you must issue a reasoned status determination statement with a disagreement process. If you apply a blanket determination without examining the actual engagement, the income tax and National Insurance liability can land on you. If you are a small organisation, the responsibility stays with us. Either way, we scope work around defined deliverables, retain control of our own methods, stay out of your hierarchy and work for other clients — which makes an honest determination straightforward rather than a problem to be papered over. We also say plainly that consultancy is unregulated, and we refer anything needing FCA authorisation, a regulated lawyer or a qualified accountant.
Frequently asked
The questions we get most
What are the off-payroll rules and why are you raising them?
They determine whether a contractor's engagement is treated as employment for tax. Since April 2021, for medium and large private sector clients, the client makes that determination, must take reasonable care and must issue a reasoned status determination statement. If the client gets it wrong without taking reasonable care, the income tax and National Insurance liability can sit with the client. We raise it because it is your exposure, and because scoping an engagement properly makes the determination easy.
Can we just put every contractor inside IR35 to be safe?
You can, and a blanket determination applied without considering the actual engagement is not taking reasonable care, which is itself the problem the rules were written against. It also costs you more and tends to lose you the contractors you wanted. The better route is to look at the real arrangement, which is why we document the facts rather than leaving you to guess.
We are a small company. Does this still apply?
The off-payroll rules as they apply to clients do not apply to small organisations, in which case responsibility for determining status stays with us rather than you. It is still worth having the engagement scoped properly, but the determination burden is not yours. We will tell you which side of that line we think you are on.
Can you sit with our team two days a week?
Not as someone working under your day-to-day instruction, because that is the shape that makes an engagement look like employment. We can work on site, attend your meetings and be thoroughly embedded in a problem while still contracting for defined outputs under our own methods. The distinction is real and it is in both our interests.
Can you advise on how to invest the surplus, or look at this contract?
No to both. Advising on investments or pensions requires FCA authorisation we do not hold, and reserved legal activities require a regulated lawyer. We can work on the commercial question — what cash the business needs and when, or the operational consequences of a contractual position — and then refer you on. We do not charge for the referral.
Will you guarantee the improvement?
No. We answer for the work, the reasoning and the deliverables. What happens commercially depends on your market, your decisions and your execution, which is why we write our assumptions down separately so you can test them rather than inherit them.
Got something that needs working out?
A free first call, with no obligation.