Archive for October, 2011

HMRC provides further guidance on supplies made by employers to employees. In July 2011, HMRC provided guidance for employers on the requirement, following the Astra Zeneca decision, to account for output VAT on the provision of benefits that are provided under a salary sacrifice scheme.  At the time, HMRC made concession of requiring accounting procedures [...]

The new penalty and interest regimes for late filing of monthly construction industry returns come into force. Section 106 and Schedule 55 of the Finance Act 2009 created a new penalty regime for late filing of tax returns for most direct taxes, including income tax, PAYE, NICs, the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) and pension schemes.  [...]

HMRC summaries the responses to its consultation on the collection methods of RTI In a document published on 30 September, HMRC has summarised the comments provided in 187 responses to the consultation document PAYE: Collecting Real Time Information that was issued in December 2010.  The document also explains the various decisions that have been made as [...]

Worldwide subsistence rates updated from October 2011. Since February 2008, employers wishing to use scale rates to administer travel expenses have been required to set the rates by means of a sampling exercise.  However, in the case of employees who travel outside the UK, conducting a sampling exercise can be problematic as most employers do [...]

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? Forum Posts I would normally have received £633 for working the four weekends in September but my employer deducted £252 because I left on 19 September and did not work the [...]

Last month I asked you think up a word, a singular noun that, if you add one letter to the end, becomes plural and, if you add the same letter to the end again, becomes singular again. I came up with: Prince  -  princes  -  princess.  How about you? Now, for this month, what do [...]

Although we may be able to handle fluently a workplace disciplinary issue, an incident of criminal behaviour can leave us floundering, especially if the police become involved. Can we still discipline the employee? What if we dismiss but a court subsequently finds him not guilty? What if he is in custody? And do we have [...]

Promotion is a good reward for effort and of course something that ambitious employees aim for. Usually it brings status, more money and more job interest, but it has to be managed effectively. Time was, and in some places still is, when promotion comes with service, or rather the longest serving member of the team [...]

An ageing employee We have an elderly employee who frankly is past his sell-by date. How can we get rid of him? Reply Forget age or you will find yourself contravening age discrimination legislation. Also do not rush to get rid. You have an employee who is failing to perform to standard, so what would [...]

The Agency Workers Regulations came into force at the beginning of this month so, if you employ temporary staff, for example as clerical workers, drivers, warehouse operatives, make sure that you understand how these regulations now affect you. Essentially they require you to treat agency staff in exactly the same way as your permanent staff [...]

Our lead story this week looks at the recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the long-running dispute between British Airways and its pilots on the way in which their holiday pay is calculated.  The UK Supreme Court has yet to make its own ruling on theEuropean Court’s decision but [...]

HMRC’s latest PAYE Update reminds payroll software developers and employers of what they need to do to prepare for abolition of defined contribution contracting-out from April 2012. It will be each employer’s responsibility in April 2012 to allocate the correct NI Table Letter to those employees affected by the withdrawal of contracting-out for all pension [...]

The September 2011 issue of Employer Bulletin is available to download. The latest news and reminders for employers is available in the September 2011 issue of HMRC’s Employer Bulletin.  Among the topics discussed are: the new Enhanced Recognition Scheme for Commercial Payroll Software an update of Real Time Information payment issues affecting employers of all [...]

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? Forum Posts A UK-resident, living temporarily in Serbia, has started to work for us.  Can we treat him as any other UK employee or are there any special international tax/NICs rules [...]

Two sets of national minimum wage regulations introduce, in addition to the 1 October increases, other measures relating to training schemes and student accommodation. The October increases to the national minimum wage (NMW) rates have been given effect by means of the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2011.  These amendment regulations and a further set [...]