Archive for July 19th, 2010

Is an employee entitled to SSP if the employer deliberately does not pay wages during the relevant period and is later forced by a tribunal to make the payments?  The answer is disturbing. Two Finance Acts in one year is not an unusual situation but it looks as if there will be three Finance Acts [...]

An employee is not entitled to SSP if the employee’s average earnings in the eight-week relevant period prior to the payday before the first day of the period of incapacity is less than the NICs lower earnings limit (currently £97 per week/£421 per month). But what happens if an employee receives no wages during the [...]

A new schedule of allowances for magistrates (Justices of the Peace) in England and Wales, who are not paid for their absences by their employers, took effect from 1 May 2010.  However, the financial loss allowances are unchanged from those that took effect from 1 May 2009. Self-employed Magistrates Employed Magistrates to 30/4/10 from 1/5/10 [...]

The Government announced at the June Budget that it will end the effective requirement to purchase an annuity by age 75 from April 2011.  On 15 July, HM Treasury published a consultation document that sets out proposals to simplify the treatment of retirement savings and reduce complexity for individuals and for pension and annuity providers. [...]

The Government has published draft legislation for a further Finance Bill that will be introduced to Parliament in the autumn.  The Bill consists mainly of technical tax measures inherited from the previous government and the purpose of publishing the details now is to obtain comments on whether or not the legislation will work as intended. [...]

Many employers have workers who are called “casual” workers.  These are often people who do not work regularly but who are called on when the employer has the work, perhaps during the summer season, over Christmas, at harvest time, or at other times of peak production or trading.  These are not casual workers for PAYE [...]

The Scottish Agricultural Wages Board (SAWB) has proposed the following increases in the minimum hourly rates payable from 1 October 2009, from £5.80 to £5.96 per hour for those in their first 26 weeks of employment, from £6.32 to £6.51 for those employed for more that 26 weeks by the same employer, and from £3.50 [...]

The income tax legislation provides a number of tax exemptions for benefits provided to disabled employees.  These include: calculating the taxable value of a car with automatic transmission, which is provided for personal use as if it were a manual transmission car, in respect of its list price and its CO2 emissions figure, and accessories [...]

At their July 2009 meeting, the States approved an increase in pension age from 65 to 67 commencing in 2020. Although the detailed legislation has not yet been approved, the Social Security Department has issued the table below to show how it is intended to phase in the increase in pension age. Date of birth [...]