Status determination statement

Description

A status determination statement (SDS) is the written record an engager issues to a worker explaining the worker's classification (employee, worker, off-payroll contractor under IR35, or independent contractor) and the reasoning for the determination. The UK's IR35 regime requires the SDS by statute for medium and large engagers; analogous documentation surfaces under California AB5, the EU Platform Work Directive's rebuttable presumption, and various US state misclassification statutes. The statement typically covers the classification reached, the test applied (control-and-direction, ABC test, mutuality-of-obligation, integration), the specific facts that drove the determination, and the route the worker can use to challenge it. 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 courts and tribunals tend to read against the engager. 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.

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

ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• SDS template
• issued-SDS log