Double standards are a big part of the problems in this area for sure. Another obvious example from recent times was the COVID support schemes. If you were an o

Double standards are a big part of the problems in this area for sure. Another obvious example from recent times was the COVID support schemes. If you were an owner-operated business that paid out through the usual salary+dividend combination then you would have got far less if you needed to use something like the furlough scheme than if you'd been paying everything out as salary or registered as self-employed. IMHO that's fair enough in itself - if you claim to be operating like a business and treating your income as business profits rather than salary normally then you don't magically get to change your mind to claim a different support scheme. But it's pretty hypocritical for the government/HMRC to then come along the next day and try to interpret the income of that business as if it were all salary and tax it as such to their benefit.