London, Tuesday 3rd May 2011 – ContractorCalculator has received its seventh ABC certificate, confirming the UK’s expert site for contractors had over 130,000 unique visitors/browsers in March. The monthly average readership for 2010 was 109,485 confirming the success of the site’s commitment to: professional reporting, thought leadership; calculators that help contractors through every stage of their careers; and tools such as the free online IR35 tests.
“March 2011 will be marked in contracting history as the month that IR35 was not abolished,” says ContractorCalculator CEO Dave Chaplin. “Over 130,000 contractors turned to ContractorCalculator as history unfolded, with the publication of the Office of Tax Simplification’s interim Small Business Taxation report on IR35 and the Budget in March. And analysis of our figures shows that it wasn’t just the ‘big news’ month of March that hit a 2011 high; for example, even in the traditionally quiet January we saw an 8% jump in readership.”
As Chaplin explains, ContractorCalculator is now in its fourth year of investing in ABC audits, and the site now has seven ABC audit certificates, each confirming unique visitor numbers greater than 100,000 over four consecutive years. “Our ongoing investment into highly accurate and up-to-date online interactive income calculators, high quality editorial and innovations such as our free Online IR35 Test have kept contractors returning to the site.”
January 2011 saw the publication of ContractorCalculator’s IR35 Solutions White Paper. According to Chaplin, author of the acclaimed Contractors Handbook, the ContractorCalculator team’s forecasts in the white paper have come to pass. Most notably, as he explains: “We predicted that IR35 could not be abolished, would remain in force and would be better enforced until root and branch tax reform made it irrelevant,” says Chaplin.
“In line with our predictions, Chancellor George Osborne confirmed in his 2011 Budget that IR35 was indeed to remain in force and be ‘better administered’ by HMRC, whilst also setting in train the potential merging of collecting income tax and National Insurance that would make IR35 irrelevant. He exactly followed the path we laid out!”
Other recent ContractorCaclulator innovations include the ContractorCalculator Jobs Board and Online IR35 Test, developed in association with IR35 experts Qdos Consulting. The site also contains over 500 contracting guides and publishes contracting news, features and comment as it happens.
Chaplin concludes: “ContractorCalculator remains the only contracting sector online advertising property to invest regularly in the industry’s gold-standard ABC audits, which means that contracting sector service providers can invest in our online marketing solutions with confidence and trust.”