All Tax and legislation articles – Page 38
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Article
Royal Mail staff must wait for full shares allocation
Royal Mail employees will not receive their full free share allocation until April 2014.Using calculations based on a maximum share price offer of 330p per share, the 150,000 eligible full-time employees were due to immediately receive around 725 free shares each, while part-time staff would receive a smaller number of ...
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Article
Court blocks offshore bonus tax avoidance scheme
A £31 million offshore bonus tax avoidance scheme operated by Aberdeen Asset Management has been shut down by a Scottish court.The FTSE 100-listed fund manager paid senior employees and directors bonuses free of income tax and national insurance contributions (NICs), between 2000 and 2003, using an employee benefits trust (EBT).The ...
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Article
Enhanced redundancy payments for older workers not discriminatory
The judgement, on 11 October, relates to the case earlier this year of Romily Lockwood v Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and Cabinet Office in which the former administrative officer for the DWP claimed that the voluntary redundancy scheme offered by the organisation discriminated against her because of her ...
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Article
Multinationals unprepared for expatriate tax and payroll issues
Multinational employers do not have the adequate procedures in place to track tax, payroll and immigration issues for employees on formal or informal overseas assignments, according to research by EY.Its Your talent in motion: global mobility effectiveness survey 2013, which questioned 264 senior global mobility professionals, found that, despite this, ...
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Article
Age-related pension contributions not discriminatory
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that age-related employer contributions to pension schemes are lawful and not discriminatory to employees.The case of HK Danmark v Experion A/S 2013 concerned an organisation that set up a pension scheme for employees in Denmark with employer contributions at the following rates: ...
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Article
HMRC tackles pensions tax abuse
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has made a number of changes to strengthen existing processes to tackle the attempted misuse or abuse of the pension tax rules, deter pension liberation and safeguard employees’ pension savings.The changes, which took effect from 21 October, include:Registering a pension scheme: HMRC has made the ...
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Opinion
Diana Bruce: Zero-hours contracts could be advantageous to employees
In response to September’s Big Question, Should zero-hours contracts include minimum benefits provision?, by offering workers on zero-hours contracts a minimum benefits provision, there is debate that [employers] would then, in effect, be treating them as employees rather than workers, entitling them to certain statutory rights. The priority here, as ...
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Article
Bank of England and FCA respond to remuneration report
The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have both published their responses to a report on a revised remuneration code for the banking industry.The Changing banking for good report, which was published by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS) in June 2013, made a series of ...
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Article
New guidance on public sector pension transfers
HM Treasury has published new Fair Deal guidance on the transfer of public sector pensions.The new approach to Fair Deal set out in the guidance, Fair Deal for staff pensions: staff transfer from central government, aims to ensure that staff compulsorily transferred out of the public sector will continue to ...
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Article
Tax on benefits-in-kind should be equal
More than three-quarters (81%) of respondents said benefits-in-kind should all be taxed at the same rate, according to research by the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) and the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT).The research, which surveyed payroll and accountancy professionals, is in response to an Office of Tax Simplification ...
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Article
Consultation on executive pay published
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has published a consultation on executive remuneration.The consultation follows legislative changes, which came in on 1 October, which made votes on remuneration reports binding.It will cover three specific areas:Clawback arrangements.Whether non-executive directors who are also executive directors in other organisations should sit on the remuneration ...
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Article
National minimum wage increases
The national minimum wage has increased by 12p to £6.31 an hour for adults on 1 October.The rise follows recommendations made by the Low Pay Commission in April 2013.Other changes include:Employees aged between 18 and 20 years will see a 5p rise, from £4.98 to £5.03.Employees under the age of ...
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Article
Staff make provisions to avoid annual allowance threshold
More than 16,000 UK workers who contribute to registered pension schemes made contributions in excess of the £50,000 annual allowance threshold by using the carry-forward provisions, according to research by Kuber Ventures.The research, which analysed data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for pension contributions in the 2011/12 tax year, ...
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Article
HMRC reports on real-time information issues
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has published a report into the findings from analysis of disputed pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) charges associated with real-time information reporting.It had received feedback that some PAYE schemes have experienced difficulties in reconciling the difference between the tax HMRC says is due and the tax the employer ...
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Article
Tupe changes will allow employment term renegotiation
Employers will be able to renegotiate the terms and conditions of employees when transferring them between businesses, as part of changes announced by the government to Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Tupe) regulations.This is provided that the overall change is no less favourable for an employee than their previous ...
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Article
Venture Capital Platform to launch savings scheme for high earners
EXCLUSIVE: The Venture Capital Platform is to launch a workplace savings scheme that aims to offer high earners an alternative to a pension scheme.The investment-linked scheme, which will be launched at Employee Benefits Live on 25 and 26 September, has been developed in light of the government’s changes to the ...
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Article
Pay ratio disclosure proposed in US
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed new legislation that would require public employers to disclose the ratio of the compensation of its chief executive officer to the median compensation of its employees. The legislation would not prescribe a specific methodology for employers to use in calculating a pay ...
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Article
Sam Gee: Should zero-hours contracts include a minimum benefits provision?
Flexibility is good for business. Matching the people needed to the peaks and troughs in work makes for an efficient operation.Having the biggest choice of available workers is also good for business and people such as retirees, carers, students or second-jobbers may be looking for occasional earnings. So I can ...
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Article
Consultation on bankers' bonuses launched
The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched a consultation in July on the instruments that banks can use to satisfy the standards of its bankers’ bonus cap legislation.The EBA’s draft Regulatory Technical Standards, which includes the requirement for banks to pay 50% of variable remuneration in non-cash instruments, is expected to ...
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Article
Commission calls on government to tackle low pay
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has called on the government to develop a low wage strategy to raise the bottom rungs on the UK pay ladder.In its report, Social mobility: the next steps, the government-appointed commission recommends that the government:Mandate the Low Pay Commission to set out affordable ...