As anticipated, there were no surprises for payroll, pensions or reward in yesterday’s short Spring Statement and many of the commitments that the Chancellor did announce hang in the balance as we wait to find out if the threat of a no-deal Brexit can be removed tonight.   Minimum wage, apprenticeships and the Employment Allowance […]

We’ve heard that we don’t necessarily have to pay our staff the new national living wage (NLW)/national minimum wage (NMW) rates from 1 April 2019. Is this true? Even though the NLW and NMW rate go up on 1 April annually, it’s true that your workers might not qualify for the new rates on that […]

New research shows there are over 1 million workers, paid by the public purse, trapped in in-work poverty earning below the real Living Wage – currently £9 across the UK and £10.55 in London.   The new data, calculated by the Smith Institute for the Living Wage Foundation, reveals that 1.2 million public sector workers earn below […]

The Employment Allowance is to be restricted from April 2020 to those smaller organisations with a National Insurance contribution (NIC) bill below £100,000 in the previous tax year. The Employment Allowance is an annual amount that is currently available to all businesses and charities (with some exclusions) to offset against their Class 1 secondary NICs […]

Research shows that more than 1 in 5 people in the at-risk age range consider themselves too savvy to be scammed. Intelligence gathered by members of the multi-agency Project Bloom group, which was set up to tackle pension scams, has found some people who had managed to put away more than £1 million have lost their […]

Ahead of the 31 January self assessment deadline, fraudsters are once again on the move with emails claiming you are entitled to a tax refund. Wording (in bad English, which is always a sign) is along the lines of:   “HM Revenue & Customs – Tax Notice We would like to notify that you are […]

The Right to Work Checking Service, which is secure and free to use, was launched in April 2018, however until mid-December 2018 employers still needed to request paper documents alongside using the service. Changes to the online service mean that employers can use it to demonstrate they conducted the necessary right to work checks on migrants […]

In December 2018 the government announced its final decision on the future of zero-hour contracts. Although it’s been under pressure to ban them entirely, it’s opted to do something different. What’s happening? The government has decided to allow the continued use of zero-hour contracts. However, it intends to give these individuals a new statutory right […]

According to the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) latest Sector Review, consumers lacking an adequate retirement income is the central challenge facing the pensions sector in 2019. The FCA’s recently published ‘Sector Views’ provides its annual analysis of the changing financial landscape, the resulting impacts on consumers and market effectiveness. One of the sections of the […]

The automatic enrolment duties were staged in between October 2012 and February 2018 by employer size, starting with the largest employers. Since October 2017, all businesses employing someone for the very first time have to provide a workplace pension from the first day of their service. In 2018, the first of two planned minimum contribution […]