It's making them pay the incorrect level of tax that;'s been controversial.
Imagine this: The fees your profession charges haven't changed or have fallen from a decade ago as the market is dominated by giant multi-national companies PLUS to get the work you have no option but to sign zero hours contracts that guarantee no work whatsoever PLUS you receive no sick pay, holiday pay or pension PLUS when COVID struck, you could be and were dropped unpaid, indefinitely, at 24 hours notice PLUS you received no Government help at all during that period because you had to keep your business going and even those odd scraps of work ruled out financial help.
Then imagine that once you go back to work properly months later you have to shell out hundreds of pounds for experts to prove the blindingly obvious, that your circumstances mean you are rightly deemed self-employed - as you have been for decades. However, clients are now so risk averse that, at best, you'll spend literally days battling their legal departments to get that evidence accepted. Just as often, they'll ignore the evidence completely and impose arbitrary limits on how often you can work for them, slashing your earnings potential for the year by about 20-30%.
The only alternative is to be forced on to payroll where any 'benefits' that suggests will be deducted from your existing rate while you remain on a zero hours contract etc etc. Should that person now be taxed exactly the same as the genuine employee sat next to them who gets private medical insurance, a company car, a company pension, sick pay, paid holiday, use of the company gym, access to employee discounts with related firms and who was furloughed on 80% of their pay for the entirety of the pandemic?
Many fellow freelancers have done what I've done. Taken a massive financial hit, seen years of progress go down the pan but refused to surrender self-employed status incorrectly. The end of ir35 will be a gigantic relief for the huge proportion of genuinely self-employed people it should never have affected in the first place. It's just a shame that years of those arguments being totally ignored had no effect - yet now it suits the political dogma, it's gone. Right outcome, finally, but the motive stinks.
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