Status determination statement

Description

A status determination statement is the written record an engager issues to a worker (and, where relevant, to the agency immediately above the worker in the supply chain) explaining the worker's classification and the reasoning behind it. The statement typically covers the classification reached (employee, worker, off-payroll contractor under IR35, independent contractor), the test applied (control-and-direction, the ABC test, mutuality-of-obligation, integration, the EU Platform Work Directive's presumption), the specific facts that drove the determination, and the route the worker can use to challenge it. The UK IR35 regime requires the SDS by statute for medium and large engagers under ITEPA 2003 s61T, with a 45-day disagreement-review process the worker can invoke. Analogous documentation discipline shows up under California AB5 and AB2257 (where the ABC test puts the burden on the engager to demonstrate Prong B and Prong C in any later dispute), under the EU Platform Work Directive's rebuttable presumption (where a documented classification rationale is the operator's tool to rebut), and under the various US state misclassification statutes that have followed the AB5 contour. The Spanish riders law and the German Federal Labour Court's platform-worker decisions sit in adjacent legal frames with similar evidentiary expectations. What the SDS actually does is shift the evidentiary burden in any later dispute. Without one, the engager argues classification from facts reconstructed after the relationship ended, which tribunals and courts tend to read against the engager regardless of the underlying merits. With one, the determination has a contemporaneous baseline against which later facts can be measured. The recurring failure mode is template SDSs that recite the test without engaging with the specific facts of the engagement: tribunals have read formulaic statements as evidence the determination was not actually made on the merits, and the SDS then carries less weight than no statement at all. Evidence formats that hold up include the SDS template with the test elements visible, the issued-SDS log keyed to the worker engagement and dated contemporaneously with the start of the engagement, and the disagreement-review record where the worker challenged the determination and the engager responded within the statutory window.

Applicability

Applies when: business participants include individual-workers.

How predicates are evaluated

Required by (1 regulation)

• UK IR35

  ITEPA 2003 s61T — SDS to worker and agency immediately above worker in chain; 45-day disagreement-review process.

  ITEPA 2003 s61T

Fulfilled by (1)

• In-house build · low effort

Magist does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• SDS template
• issued-SDS log