The Supreme Court has issued its ruling in HMRC v Professional Game Match Officials Ltd (PGMOL), more than a year on from the 2023 hearing, dismissing the refereeing body’s appeal and sending the case back to a First Tier Tribunal (FTT) for the original decision to be remade.
First heard in 2018, the PGMOL case – which carries a liability of around £584,000 – centres on the engagement of sole traders rather than limited company contractors, and so is a crucial litmus test of the application of employment status among the wider self-employed workforce. The ruling, issued on Monday 16th September, further extends a long-running saga which has already been heard at the FTT, the Upper Tier (UTT) of the tax chamber and at the Court of Appeal before reaching the Supreme Court. This case has focussed on the contracts held between PGMOL and its referees, and the overall issue is “whether the contracts formed each time that an offer of a match appointment was accepted by a referee, were contracts of employment” rather than self-employment. At the FTT, it was found that individual match contracts “were not contracts of employment, on the grounds that, first, the mutual obligations were insufficient… and second, PGMOL had insufficient control over the referees under the individual match contracts”. HMRC appealed, though the UTT upheld the original decision. At the Court of Appeal, the judges ruled in HMRC’s favour in relation to the individual contracts, but that the “overarching contracts were not to be treated as contracts of employment”. It also remitted the case to the FTT to reach a decision on whether the individual contracts should be treated as contracts of employment. However, PGMOL appealed against this, bringing the case to the Supreme Court. At the highest level of the legal system, the judges ruled that the individual match contracts contained “a sufficient framework of control exercisable by PGMOL to satisfy the element of control necessary for a contract of employment”. The Supreme Court remitted the case to the FTT for its decision, to be considered “on the basis of its original findings of fact” and in line with the guidance established by the Court of Appeal in Atholl House, and “the nature of the mutual obligations and the degree of control exercisable by PGMOL”.
Source: cbw
