The determination is yours. So is the burden of showing you took care.
Under s.61NA ITEPA 2003 the statement is your organisation's own — and a conclusion reached without reasonable care is not a statement at all. The determination, and the reasonable care behind it, remain yours. Nebula keeps the file that shows the care: both accounts of how the work runs, the reasons you relied on, who it went to, and when.
The checks need no account and store nothing.
- Affirmed by
- A named admin
- Delivered
- Worker + agency
- Receipt
- Recorded on their click
- Challenge
- 45 days from receipt
SHA-256 a3f1…9c72 — verifiable at /trust
Three questions you can answer right now
All three are free, need no sign-up, and store nothing.
Five questions about the organisation — not any engagement. Small companies are outside Chapter 10 entirely, and the worker’s own company decides instead.
UK residence, or a UK permanent establishment such as a branch. A client based wholly overseas with no UK connection is outside the off-payroll rules entirely, and the worker's own company considers Chapter 8 instead (ESM10006).
NHS bodies, government departments and agencies, local authorities, police and fire authorities, state schools, universities and the BBC. If you are, the rules apply whatever your size.
A company is always small in its first financial year.
Not £15m: the Companies Act thresholds rose for accounting periods beginning on or after 6 April 2025, but size is judged from earlier years on a two-year test, so on HMRC's published position (ESM10006A) the uplift has no practical effect for engagers of off-payroll workers until 6 April 2027 at the earliest.
45 days beginning with receipt. Miss it and the PAYE and NIC liability moves from the fee-payer onto you until you comply.
The date the worker or the deemed employer told you they disagree with the conclusion in your status determination statement.
Every Chapter 10 duty for one worker, and whether you have discharged it — including the two that most often move the tax without anyone noticing.
The hard deadline: the statement must be issued and passed on by then, or the tax stays with you.
If a service is fully contracted out, the provider is the client and owes the statement — not you (ESM10010). Answer No if this is a genuinely contracted-out service.
s.61U puts that duty on the worker AND their company. It is the evidence for how you knew Chapter 10 applied at all.
Not the contract — who allocates the work, what happens if the worker is ill, whether a substitute has ever been sent.
If so, the statement has to reach them as well as the worker.
From the worker or the deemed employer. Leave blank if nobody has.
Before any of that: is the engagement even yours?
The checks above ask whether the rules reach your organisation. This one asks whether they reach this particular worker through you — and it is the answer most often taken for granted. HMRC gives contracted-out services their own part of the published guidance, which is a fair signal of how often it goes wrong.
The worker performs services for you
The worker supplies services to you directly, so you are the client and the Chapter 10 duties are yours — determine, issue with reasons, pass it down the chain.
ITEPA 2003 Pt 2 Ch 10
You contracted this service out
Where a service is genuinely contracted out, the provider it went to is the client — and it, not you, must determine status and issue the statement. Recording it as contracted out does not make it so.
ESM10010; GfC4 part 7
You were contracted to deliver it
You are the client for off-payroll purposes on every worker you deploy to deliver the service. The duties are yours, not the organisation's that contracted you — and if you have assumed otherwise, nobody is issuing them.
ESM10010; GfC4 part 7
Nothing here decides whether a service is genuinely contracted out
That turns on who directs the work, who carries the risk of the output and whether a service is being supplied rather than labour — facts no dropdown can settle. So the engagement asks HMRC's four indicators instead, and where your own answers contradict the position you have taken, it says so in HMRC's words rather than scoring it.
- Is a service being supplied, or is it a supply of labour? Written terms do not change what it actually is.
- Does the work align closely with the nature of your own business, or a department within it?
- Who controls the workers day to day — the provider, or you?
- Is the contract what actually happens in practice?
Read it at source: ESM10010 and Help to comply, part 7: contracted-out services (GOV.UK).
“How did you know Chapter 10 applied at all?”
The rules bite only where the worker provides services through an intermediary meeting the statutory conditions — and s.61U puts a duty on the worker AND their company to confirm to you whether those conditions are met. It is a first-order enquiry question, and the intended answer is “they told us, on this date”. Every other date on an engagement here is captured to the minute; this one is now captured too, with who said it — and flagged when it is missing rather than assumed.
Determined, delivered, challenged, defended
A verdict is one moment in a sequence that runs for years. This is the whole of it — and every step is a record the product keeps, not a promise about one.
- 1. Determine
A conclusion, and the reasons for it
The client reaches a status conclusion on facts gathered from both sides of the engagement, and a named person affirms it. The settled answers are frozen at that moment, so what this version rested on stays reproducible.
s.61NA ITEPA 2003 — a conclusion without reasons is not a statement at all.
- 2. Deliver
Passed on, before anyone is paid
The statement goes to the worker and to the party the client contracts with. Receiving it and failing to pass it down the chain is what moves the deductions onto you.
ESM10013 — issued on or before the date any payment is made.
- 3. Receipt
Acknowledged by the person who received it
The recipient opens the link and acknowledges with their own click. That is proof of receipt — a date the sender types in is only an assertion.
- 4. Challenge
Someone disagrees, and a clock starts
The worker or the deemed employer can make representations. The client then has a fixed window to respond with reasons — and missing it moves the PAYE and NIC liability onto the client until it complies.
s.61T ITEPA 2003 — 45 days beginning with the date of receipt.
- 5. Answer
Answered, on the record
The client either confirms the determination with reasons or issues a new one. Either way the answer and its date sit on the file, which is what stops the clock.
- 6. Defend
And if HMRC writes, the file is already built
Ten indexed sections assembled from what actually happened — the determination and its reasons, both accounts, delivery and receipt, the challenge and its answer, reviews and the audit trail. Sections with nothing in them say so.
The dates that move the tax come and find you
Three facts on an engagement decide whether a duty is discharged or merely started, and all three used to sit quietly in a diary waiting to be looked at. They are pushed now — once per state, never daily, because a reminder that arrives every morning is a reminder that gets filtered.
A challenge is open and the window is closing
Subject
12 days left to answer the challenge on A. Whitfield
Confirm the conclusion with reasons, or issue a new statement, before the end of 45 days beginning with the day you received the representations. A second notice goes when the window passes — and says plainly that it is a window, not a cliff: answering now still closes it.
s.61T ITEPA 2003 · Keyed per challenge, so a second set of representations is a new clock rather than one already chased.
The statement went out and nobody opened it
Subject
Statement for A. Whitfield not acknowledged yet
HMRC's position is that the statement should be issued on or before the date any payment is made, and that a party who has not passed it on keeps responsibility for the tax and NICs. An unopened link is not a discharged duty.
ESM10013 · Keyed to the recipient and the date it was sent, so re-issuing to a new party chases separately.
The worker was invited and has not answered
Subject
A. Whitfield has not given their account yet
Determining without the facts of the actual working arrangements is HMRC's own example of a reasonable-care failure — and until the account is in, the engagement cannot be affirmed here at all.
ESM10014 · One open invite is one chase, however long it stays open.
The notice is recorded before it is sent, so a failure loses a nudge rather than repeating one. The same engine decides what is due here, in the console chip and in the calendar feed — so an email and the screen behind it cannot disagree about whether something is outstanding.
What an account keeps
The checks tell you where you stand today. The record is what answers the question two years from now.
Reasonable care means knowing how the work actually runs
Your hiring manager’s account of the working arrangements and the worker’s own, the differences between them, and the recorded reason for whichever you relied on.
- Determining without the facts of the actual arrangements is HMRC’s own example of a reasonable-care failure (ESM10014).
- Conflicts are listed as conflicts — never averaged into one comfortable answer.
- The worker answers on their own link, with no account and no sign-up.
- Accounts kept
- Manager + worker
- Conflicts
- Listed, not merged
- Guidance
- ESM10014
The diary, the enquiry bundle and the document verification underneath all of this are shared with the other two roles — the hub describes them once.
Sign in
For organisations already keeping the record with us.
What an enquiry asks, and what a determination on its own can answer
A verdict is one line. These are the questions that come years later, when the person asking them was not in the room.
Nebula provides software and AI-assisted decision-support. It is not regulated financial, tax or legal advice, and there is no human review step behind its output — what the tool produces is a recommendation your organisation decides on. Nothing here discharges a statutory duty. See how we earn trust.
Pricing
Priced by engagements under management, not per assessment — so nobody rations a determination. Ex VAT; VAT is added at checkout or reverse-charged against your VAT number.
Free
Issue real status determinations for a handful of engagements.
- 3 active engagements
- 3 seats
- SDS issue, acknowledgement and disagreement
- Cadence reviews and the evidence bundle
Standard
The whole duty cycle for a working contractor book, unmetered.
- 25 active engagements
- Unlimited seats
- SDS issue, acknowledgement and disagreement
- Cadence reviews and the evidence bundle
Scale
For a book large enough that the diary and cadence do the work.
- 100 active engagements
- Unlimited seats
- SDS issue, acknowledgement and disagreement
- Cadence reviews and the evidence bundle
Enterprise
Above 100 engagements, or where procurement needs its own paper.
- Unlimited engagements
- Unlimited seats
- SDS issue, acknowledgement and disagreement
- Cadence reviews and the evidence bundle