Richard Rowell's blog
In Hok to HMRC over P35 penalties? - 12 January 2012
If you have received penalties for late filing of P35's the following may be of interest. In the recent case of Hok Limited v HMRC a P35 penalty has been overturned on the basis that HMRC waited several months before issuing penalty notices. read the full details
Stringfellows, the lapdancer and your payroll - 01 December 2011
What has a recent Employment Tribunal (ET) between Stringfellows and one of its lapdancers got to do with your business. Well it could be quite important if you use self-employed workers.
A judge has recently ruled that a lap dancer will be allowed to appeal a recent ET decision to establish whether she was an employee of Stringfellows rather than self-employed as she was treated for tax purposes.
read the full details
Universal Tax Credits and RTI - 02 November 2011
For employers that haven't heard of it yet the Universal Credit system is the new system that will deliver benefits from 2014 onwards. And for it to work the Government need upto date, accurate real time information about employees and their pay to calculate.
That Real Time Information (or RTI) will impact on your payroll processes and will increase the amount and frequency of imformation shared with HMRC. Real Time Information is required for the one million plus people who will be claiming Universal Credit by April 2014
read the full details
A cautionary tale for employers over Facebook comments - 25 October 2011
At a recent employment tribunal it was held that dismissing an employee for uploading relatively minor work based comments onto Facebook was unfair.
Law firm Pinsent Masons reported
"W was employed as a team leader for Skoda Customer Services, an important client of her employer. Representatives of Skoda worked along side her. She had been employed since 2007 and had been an exemplary employee with a clean disciplinary record.
read the full details
When is a self employed contractor an employee - 20 October 2011
A recent case in the long line of many regarding employment status has gone before the courts. However, this one addressed the issue of what a contract states versus what actually happens in reality.
Specifically. this case addressed the issue of whether an individual, who is expressly described as a self-employed contractor in his contract, is really a 'worker'.
Daniel Barnett’s Employment Law Bulletin reports:
read the full details
Payroll service outsourcing - a recession beater ? - 14 October 2011
Faced with a recession many businesses and organisations maintain where possible the customer facing / delivery parts of their business while looking to cut costs elsewhere. Typically, this is in the back office and one of the favourite areas is finance.
While vital, finance and in particular payroll is an area that can be effectively outsourced. Indeed payroll outsourcing, because of its technical nature, has commonly been outsourced for many years. The market for outsourced payroll services is now quite mature. read the full details
Employment Tribunals - help for employers at last - 04 October 2011
George Osbourne has announced two changes that will significantly help emloyers deal with the red tape and costs when facing employment tribunals.
Mr Osbourne claims that the changes will reduce the number of Employment Tribunals and boost the economy. read the full details
Pension reform - lack of awareness - 27 September 2011
This one is a pet subject for me but I make no apologies in repeating the theme. A recent study has again highlighted that many businesses are still not aware of the new pension rules that come into force from next year.
The survey looked at businesses that do not already provide pensions found that the employers are unlikely to auto-enrol employees into either NEST or an employer's scheme when the reforms come in. This is in clear contrast to the requirements of the new regime and highlights a lack of awareness
read the full details
Pension reform and the impact on your business - 23 June 2011
Although there has been a deal of publicity we are still surprised that many employers are completely unaware of the pension changes commencing in October 2012. And of those employers who are aware of the impending changes many are very sketchy on the details.
The changes themselves arise due to the increasing burden of paying retirement benefits from current year’s tax receipts is a major concern and the new pension reforms are the governments way of plugging that gap. read the full details
Happy Tax Freedom Day - 30 May 2011
It may pass many by unnoticed but 30th May is a milestone for employees across the UK. Why? It is Tax Freedom Day!
Tax Freedom Day aims to answer a very basic question: ‘how much are Britons actually paying for government?’
Each year the boffins at the Adam Smith Institute calculate how many days you have to work each year to pay off your taxes. This year it is exactly 5 months. So once we reach the 1 June everything you earn is effectively ours. Today is the day you stop working for the government and start working for yourselves.
read the full details
