The change to the tax system could also reduce the incentive for companies to treat some workers as self-employed contractors rather than employees, a common practice for big players in the sharing economy like Uber and Deliveroo. Uber is currently appealing a court decision that ruled it must class its drivers as employees.

The self-employed tax hike won’t be a big money spinner immediately. The government forecasts that it will raise just £145 million a year by 2021-22, a small sum considering that the move awkwardly breaks a key promise in the Conservative party’s 2015 manifesto. Instead, the effort to close the tax gap between self-employed workers and employees reflects a state preparing for a future in which self-employment keeps rising and the labor market becomes increasingly informal.

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