> when the UK introduced a tax break on the first £X of employee salaries, giant corporations like G4S shifted their employees to work for 48,000 new "small businesses", each with a handful of employees, to claim the tax break 48,000 times.

Can you point me to something that talks about this? I tried a quick Google search but wasn't able to find relevant results.

I was having a a discussion with a friend who was advocating for more small business tax breaks a couple weeks ago. My counterargument was that almost all Amazon delivery drivers are technically employees of small businesses, but I'd love to have this as a more concrete example of a large corporation abusing small business benefits.

Well... Did they send an email about this change to every app developer, or not? That would be telling.

Indeed, after working through the new bureaucracy, I've come to this realization as well. But the quoted wording isn't really helpful to realize that.