Expenses and Benefits
Taxable Benefit-in-Kind and Expenses Payments
Thursday, April 5th, 2012The UK National Statistics Publications Hub announced that new statistical data on taxable benefits in kind and expenses is to be published on 29 June 2012 on the HMRC Website. This will cover the tax years up to 2010/11. The latest version of this publication is for tax year 2007/08 with projected figures for 2008/09. [...]
Welfare Reform Act
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012After its first reading in the House of Commons on 16 February 2011, and after suffering many readings, defeats and amendments along the way, the Welfare Reform Bill received Royal Assent on 08 March 2012. Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, called the new Act ‘an historic moment for the Coalition Government’ and ‘the [...]
Exempt Homeworking Payments
Monday, March 5th, 2012The Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (ITEPA) contains Section 316A, which specifically allows employers to make payments to employees who incur additional household expenses as a result of working from home, free from tax and NICs. This section first applied for expenses incurred on or after 06 April 2003. The importance of this [...]
Advisory Fuel Rates
Monday, March 5th, 2012HMRC routinely reviews the published Advisory Fuel Rates every three months. The current rates, effective from 01 March 2012, are added to the table below. The only changes compared with the December 2011 rates are two that apply to diesel cars. Employers may choose to: implement the new rates immediately, or use the old rate [...]
Late Night Taxis – Relief to Stay
Sunday, December 11th, 2011As part of the same review which has abolished the relief on Luncheon Vouchers, Government has recommended that the exemption for the use of late night taxis be maintained. This is the relief which allows employers to pay for a taxi for employees without a consideration for tax and NICs, in the following circumstances: the [...]
Luncheon Vouchers – Repeal of Tax and Class 1 NICs Relief
Saturday, December 10th, 2011The Luncheon Voucher relief (introduced in 1946 at the time of food rationing, with the intention of helping individuals afford meals) gave tax and NICs relief on the first 15p per working day, where a voucher was provided by employer to employee. For the sake of interest only, the following will be repealed in order [...]
CMEC and HMRC
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011In January 2011, a Green Paper was published entitled ‘Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance’. Amongst the items discussed was a proposal to use income data directly from HMRC rather than the ‘non-resident parent’ when making the maintenance calculations. In October 2011, we reported on the consultation to abolish the Child [...]
Benchmark scale rates for business travel abroad
Friday, October 7th, 2011Worldwide 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 [...]
Company Cars – Car provided for lower-paid employees
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010When a company car is provided for the private use of a member of an employee’s family or household, the tax charge normally falls on the employee. Exceptionally, there is no tax liability on the employee in the following situations. The car is provided in the course of normal family relationships and the car is [...]
