Archive for April, 2011

We mentioned last week about a problem with the E12 Helpbook.  HMRC has confirmed the error and one of our news items this week explains the situation. Otherwise, our other two items are of a specialist nature – one addressing a tax avoidance issue with Employee Benefit Trusts, the other the complexities of aggregating earnings [...]

Early copies of paper and online versions of Helpbook E12 contained incorrect guidance on applying P45s for new starters between 6 April and 24 May 2011. In last week’s newsletter we provided a warning that there appeared to be E12 Helpbooks in circulation that give erroneous procedures for handling P45s that were issued in the [...]

How do the auto-enrolment rules apply for employees with two or more jobs with the same employer? One of our tutors, Vince Ashall, has been investigating some of the more complex issues that arise from the statutory rules for the auto-enrolment pension schemes that start to be phased in from October 2012.  One of these [...]

Each week we receive a number of payroll questions on our forum, and here are this week’s batch. Can you help with any answers? ChildCareVouchers – New Legislation If we did a basic earnings assessment on one of our employees under the new legislation and determined them to be a 20% tax payer and therefore [...]

Hopefully you will just about have finished reading last week’s newsletter when you receive this!  This week’s relatively few items look at two tribunal decisions, and two related items on the thresholds used by HMRC when collecting tax underpayments and repaying overpayments. A reminder about year-end payments to the Accounts Office – next Friday, 22 [...]

The First-tier Tax Tribunal comments on the quality of doctors’ comments on sick notes and the use of the Tribunal to resolve employee/employer issues. In a decision given on 9 March 2011 in the case Janicki v Revenue & Customs, the First-tier Tax Tribunal ruled that medical reports issued by Medical Services were more persuasive [...]

The Upper Tax Tribunal decides that payments in lieu of redundancy, even if paid years in advance of termination, qualify for the £30,000 exemption. On 6 December 2010, in the case Colquhoun v Revenue & Customs, the Upper Tax Tribunal overturned the January 2010 decision of the First-tier Tax Tribunal relating to the £30,000 tax [...]

The following is an extract from the latest weekly informal update (dated 8 April) from HMRC to employer representatives. A tolerance has been used since the introduction of PAYE to accommodate the rounding up and down that automatically happens when the tax tables are used to calculate weekly/monthly tax deductions. We have applied a tolerance [...]

HMRC plans to start automatic collection of tax debts under PAYE from April 2012. HMRC has issued a Technical Discussion Paper in order to finalise the statutory changes required to allow tax debts of up to £3,000 to be collected automatically under PAYE by means of a tax code adjustment.  This process, known as “coding [...]

Each week we receive a number of payroll questions on our forum, and here are this week’s batch. Can you help with any answers? Paying SSP after 3 years I understand that if an employee has been off sick (or had linked SSP absences) for 3 years or more, the employee no longer qualifies for [...]

The concept of the Default Retirement Age has been abolished in practice and, as a result, employees are now entitled to choose themselves when to retire. This is raising a number of questions that will only be resolved satisfactorily as, over time, cases emerge from the higher courts. In the meantime you cannot force employees [...]

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. Keeping it in the family We have a section in our foundry where the [...]

A client recently asked what was meant by the term “garden leave”, and clearly was hoping that we would explain it as his right to take a fortnight’s leave in the Spring to scarify the lawn and get the potatoes planted. Unfortunately we had to shatter this hope and, in the process of course, may [...]

Immoral behaviour embraces a broad range of activities and has a broad range of interpretations because, what one person may consider an improper act, another may consider freedom of expression. Two people each may have a strict code of morality, yet these codes may differ greatly in content. One of these people may consider that [...]

Last month’s problem was this: Can you think of an English word that contains three consecutive double letters? I suggested that someone in the office might know, and that would be your BOOKKEEPER. Now for this month – no mind-bending, just a straightforward question of fact: What is the oldest man-made device to break the [...]

Yes, a wide range of subjects in this week’s newsletter, almost too much to take in.  They include two worrying matters, the virtually impossible timetable for implementing RTI and the surprising last-minute cancellation of flexible working rights for parents with 17-year-old children – a government decision that is absolutely impossible to understand. Other important subjects [...]

HMRC provides initial guidance on the tax relief restrictions for employer-supported childcare and performing the “basic earnings assessment”. HMRC published a new draft guidance document on 6 April which will be finalised when the Finance Bill gains Royal Assent. However, as the equivalent NICs regulations have already been made by means of the Social Security [...]

Individuals can use this form for reporting their income from all sources for 2010/11 and earlier years and make a claim to a tax repayment. Form R40 is an informal “self-assessment” return, allowing individuals with taxable income from a variety of sources to report the details and ask HMRC to determine their tax liabilities.  It [...]

Employers using the PDV for viewing and handling tax code and other notices need to download the April 2011 version. The PAYE Desktop Viewer (PDV) is an application provided by HMRC for viewing, searching and sorting online PAYE coding notices, and other notifications and reminders. Changes to 2011/12 notices have required the PDV software to [...]

Employers who have local agreement to payroll benefits and expenses must still submit completed P11Ds or equivalent lists. Despite HMRC consideration of formal procedures for replacing P11D reporting with payrolling of benefits and expenses, existing legislation requires employers to submit P11Ds or equivalent lists even if they have local agreements to process the tax liabilities [...]