Agentic UK IR35 status determination service for small businesses and recruitment agencies (1–50 staff) that produces a Status Determination Statement (SDS), contractor engagement risk memo, and HMRC Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) audit trail for every contractor engagement. Replaces the employment solicitor or tax adviser who charges £400–£1,200 per contractor to produce a defensible SDS, document the reasonable care standard, and draft the disagreement procedure response — a process where HMRC collected £650m in off-payroll compliance in 2023/24 and small engagers remain the next enforcement target.
Why now
No fresh signal batch provided today; justified by persistent HMRC off-payroll enforcement activity (HMRC Off-Payroll Working Rules guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-working-ir35) and the known post-2021 private sector rollout leaving thousands of small engagers without defensible SDS documentation.
Source signals
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-working-ir35
Commercial value
Small businesses engaging contractors pay £400–£1,200 per SDS to tax advisers or employment lawyers. A recurring subscription of £299–£599/month for unlimited determinations replaces a real, named budget line. UK has ~2m private sector contractors; even engagers with 2–5 contractors represent a large addressable base. TAM intuition: 50,000+ small engagers still non-compliant post-2021 rollout.
Go-to-market
Target UK small business owners and finance directors via r/UKPersonalFinance, r/ContractorUK, and LinkedIn. Cold outreach to 50 recruitment agencies (they must pass SDS to contractors by law). Offer first 3 SDSs free, then £299/mo unlimited. Agencies resell as a value-add to clients.
2-week MVP
A single-page intake form (Typeform) that captures the 5 IR35 CEST decision factors; an LLM backend produces a formatted SDS PDF with a risk rating and a one-page reasonable-care memo. No dashboard, no integrations, no disagreement workflow — just the SDS document delivered by email within 2 hours. Day-1 outcome: a small business gets a legally-worded SDS they can hand to a contractor today, replacing a £400 solicitor call.
Agent score
0.61 — Commercial score high because the budget line (solicitor/tax adviser per-SDS fee) is real and named, ACV easily exceeds £500/mo for any engager with 3+ contractors, and HMRC enforcement pressure is documented. Speed high because MVP is a form + LLM + PDF email loop buildable solo in under 2 weeks with zero infrastructure. Defensibility weak at 0.45 — no proprietary data moat yet; rises to 0.6+ only if the product accumulates a corpus of HMRC disagreement outcomes that train a better model.
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Solve Studio is an independent AI automation and product studio founded by James Pates, working out of Brighton and London with clients across the UK. Get in touch at james@solve-studio.co.