"It is time to sort out the taxation of [business} income and ensure that rentiers, partners in professional firms and those set up as business owners are at least taxed on the same basis as the rest of us."
The ‘gig economy’ has grown and risen up the policy agenda in recent years. The associated growth in people working through their own businesses and in work happening through platforms highlights difficult questions about when to have boundaries in the tax system and where to put them.
Aligning tax rates between employees and the self-employed would reduce inequity while encouraging entrepreneurial risk-taking, says Stuart Adam, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.