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The bike to work scheme, introduced by the government is a tax break to encourage cycling to work. Read this blog to find out more...

From 6th April 2011 there will be changes to Employer Supported Childcare that will affect employers who operate a childcare voucher scheme and/or directly contracted childcare.

The National Minimum Wage (NMW) was introduced by the National Minimum Wage Act 1999. Each year, on 1st October, the levels are adjusted to raise the minimum wage to achieve a basic standard of living for workers. Are you paying enough?

HMRC have been issuing questionnaires to companies asking how they monitor the private use of their company vans.

Find out what you need to do....

A new online resource, 'Basic PAYE Tools', replaces HMRC's Employer CD-ROM. The resource is available on the Business Link website. As well as having all the features of the CD-ROM it also has an automatic update facility to ensure that the latest information and figures are contained within the tool.

For Greenstones customers (namely the small owner managed business) there are not really any new surprises following today’s budget.

After two years of no changes in the tax free personal allowance, the start of 2011/12 (6 April 2011) brings with it a tardy increase in the allowance from £6475 to £7475.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) announced recently that they may be unable to issue all the PAYE Payment booklets for the tax year 2011-12 to employers in time for the first payment to be made by 19 or 22 May.

HMRC have just announced on their website that they have set up a dedicated post room for receipt of paper forms P11D & P11D(b) for 2010-11

A question which we get asked fairly frequently is one of whether an employer needs to disclose on a P11d as a benefit in kind a car which is provided to an employee or director for purely business purposes. Employers often believe that such cars are pool cars and therefore there is no benefit in kind. The answer is not as straight forward as you think.

With effect from 9 August 2011 HMRC’s bank accounts have changed. It will no longer be possible to use the Bank of England accounts and therefore any payments directed to the Bank of England accounts after this date will be rejected automatically by the banking system and returned to your bank.

HM Revenue & Customs announced this month that a number of people will be receiving a tax refund (or worse a tax demand) as a result of HMRC now having the computer technology to tidy up the back log of cases it has been dealing with. Naturally this received a lot of publicity. We would all like to be one of the people who received a tax refund, but actually what this means is that these people were paying too much tax for a period of time. Indeed HMRC have recently disclosed that up to 6 million people paid too much tax through the pay as you earn (PAYE) between 2003/4 and 2007/08. What, as an employer can you do to ensure that employee PAYE information is correct?

As January is fast approaching and we are nearing the time when tax returns need to be submitted and tax bills paid, it is appropriate to issue a reminder about two practical issues which will apply this year, namely the new penalty regime for late tax returns and HMRC changing their bank account.

As from 16 December 2011 HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) are able to accept payments made using the Faster Payments Service. This allows you to make faster electronic payments, typically via internet or telephone banking, enabling them to be processed on the same or next day.

In April 2012 a pilot will begin with volunteer employers and software developers providing Real Time Information (RTI) of tax and national insurance contributions made on behalf of employees at the same time they are paid.

From April 2012 HMRC to collect all tax debts through PAYE provided the debtor is in employment or in receipt of a UK-based pension. HMRC will be able to collect small self-assessment debts and tax credit overpayment of up to £3000 through the taxpayer’s PAYE code. This will be described on the coding notice as “outstanding debt”.