Archive for December, 2010

In our first newsletter of the new year, it is to be hoped that we will hear nothing more about tax code 0T until HMRC’s guidance booklets for 2011/12 are published in a few weeks.  We have summarised all of the situations where 0T will be used, including another last-minute change! It has been a [...]

Just when we thought we had all of the new uses for tax code 0T sorted out, HMRC issued an email apologising for an error is the guidance given in the latest Notes for Payroll System Developers.  Both in HMRC’s correspondence with us and in the latest guidance for developers, we had been told that [...]

On 30 September 2010, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) announced the Government’s plans to develop flexible, family-friendly workplaces, including the extension of flexible working (i.e. the right to request a contractual change to working hours, times of work and place of work) to all parents of children under age 18, whether or [...]

In a consultation document issued at the time of the 2009 Pre-Budget Report, HMRC sought views on a number of proposed changes to the “Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Scheme” (DOTAS) regime.  The disclosure rules were originally introduced by means of the Finance Act 2004 but they have been developed extensively since then and now apply [...]

Alongside the 2009 Pre-Budget Report, the Government announced that it intended to address the problem of potentially exploitative salary sacrifice arrangements that are implemented for some temporary workers paid at or near the National Minimum Wage (NMW).  On 11 February 2010, HM Treasury published a consultation document, entitled National Minimum Wage workers: Travel and subsistence [...]

In December 2010, the European Commission, as part of its review of the EU Working Time Directive, commenced the mandatory second stage of consultation with workers’ and employers’ representatives at EU level.  It also presented a detailed Report on the legal implementation of the Working Time Directive in Member States. The second stage consultation paper [...]

A project to modernise HMRC’s compliance operational guidance has produced updated material to replace the Employer Compliance Handbook.  The Compliance Operational Guidance Manual covers the way in which compliance checks are conducted by HMRC, setting out the correct processes for starting, conducting and completing compliance checks.  It does not, however, consider case law and does [...]

The Double Taxation Agreement between the UK and Hong Kong, signed on 21 June 2010, entered into force on 20 December 2010.  It is effective in the UK from 1 April 2011 for corporation tax purposes, and from 6 April 2011 for income tax and capital gains tax.  It is effective in Hong Kong from [...]

The Labour Court has made a new Employment Regulations Order (ERO) fixing the statutory minimum rates of pay and statutory conditions of employment for workers in the scope of the Agricultural Workers Joint Labour Committee (JLC). The ERO sets new rates of pay from 31 December 2010. Further information: Labour Court ERO Agricultural Workers JLC [...]

Contracted-out employment starts at age 16 and ends when the employee reaches the state pension age. The flowchart on page 3 of the CA41 NICs Tables (for Table Letters B and C) is very specific. If an employee is at or above the state pension age table letter C must be used, even if the [...]

The following questions have been posted over the past week.  Can you contribute to any of the discussions?… How long can I delay my staff from taking holiday? We have recently had some employees leave the company, we have decided not to replace them. We have adequate staffing levels until a member of staff goes [...]

The big issue to think about is – Christmas. Here are a few important considerations: What is your policy about receiving presents? Who will be on duty and remain sober at formal parties to make sure that nobody misbehaves? Are you aware that, if a company sponsored function is held off-site and out of work [...]

Inevitably at some stage every organisation will find that it has an employee who is likely to be or has been on sick leave for a long time. This may present a problem because managers have to balance efficiency with humanity, yet the situation is not difficult to handle if you understand clearly what you [...]

If you ask most people who have just collected on their desk a pile of job applications “What do you do next?”, they will say “Draw up a short list of the best candidates, then interview them”. Sounds straightforward, but there is a most important gap between those two actions that needs to be thought [...]

Here we take our weekly look at answering some of the tricky HR questions we’ve been emailed. If you have a tricky HR question you needs answering email it to help@payroll-help.com and we’ll post the best here with an answer each week. Who should dismiss? Who should dismiss employees – the line manager or someone from [...]

Last month’s problem was: ask yourself what the following words have in common: nice job polish reading Well, the answer is that, if you give each of them a capital letter, they are pronounced differently. Here’s a real cracker for Christmas: The busy housewife had just had an argument on the phone with the local [...]

First, a personal question posted on the Payroll-help Forum this week raises the interesting issue of how a payroll department should handle a situation where the tax rates in the payroll system were set wrongly at the start of the tax year and, when they were corrected mid-year, resulted in a large tax deduction for [...]

In our article two weeks ago, we mentioned a number of situations where HMRC’s guidance on the use of tax code 0T from April 2011 needed clarifying in terms of whether it should be applied cumulatively or non-cumulatively.  We have received replies from HMRC, as follows: Where box C of form P46 is selected by [...]

We indicated in last week’s newsletter that some of the new NICs threshold figures were subject to confirmation.  All of the figures have now been issued and two small changes have been made to the updated Table below.  The changes are to the monthly and yearly secondary threshold figures.

Two weeks ago we quoted an announcement that was sent to payroll software developers on 30 November.  Although not specific, it gave the impression that only two versions of form P60 will be available from the Orderline for 2010/11. The newly published Notes for Payroll System Developers makes it clear that this change relates to [...]