Impact of Brexit on IT contractors

There are significant amount of British nationals working as IT contractors in the EU zone. There are also professional IT services with an EU customer base.

The Brexit vote is forcing IT contractors to analyse different scenarios. The Exit negotiations will be closely monitored for any early signals.

A high profile area is tariffs.It’s worth considering the potential impact of introducing tariffs . The points below highlight some of the complexities in drafting agreements between EU and Britain.

1. If the UK leaves the single market as it exits the bloc, tariffs could result in adding £18 billion to the cost of trade with Europe.
2. If Britain utilises World Trade Organisation (WTO) arrangements, this could result in EU firms paying £12.9 billion per year to the UK
3. The industry to be most impacted will be the car manufacturers. It’s estimated their tariff bill will amount to £3.9 billion
4. The overall result would be that EU firms exporting goods to the UK could have a tariff bill of 2 and a half times more than the UK firms sending goods the other away.
5. Both sides have a lot to lose if the trade arrangement is not met in the 2 years
6. A study found that 22 of the 27 remaining EU members would face more tariffs on exports to the UK than the UK exporters would face sales to them

From an IT contractor perspective – some of these big decisions will force changes in how we work. There are other high impact areas .

>Immigration - in the context of Global Population Growth, Box by Box Ted Talk

>Compliance – IR35

>Freedom of working in EU

We need to monitor the Exit negotiations. I suspect there will be some early arrangements established – to allow forward planning particularly for financial institutions .

Read More

 5 ways globalisation has impacted IT