This is our third newsletter and the first of 2023, I hope you are finding them useful. The Autumn statement seems a long time ago now, so I thought I would remind you that the NI thresholds will remain aligned with the personal tax allowance, these will be fixed until April 2028, and the Social Care Levy has been scrapped. The Employment Allowance will also remain at £5,000 for eligible employers.
2022-2023 Tax year-end To view our updated mini-budget summary please click here
The end of the current tax year is fast approaching so it is a perfect time to ensure that you have your payroll data up to date. Do you have the correct contact details for your employees? The deadline for employees to receive their P60 reports is 31 May 2023 which you could miss if you haven’t updated home addresses or email addresses.
The national minimum wage rates also need increasing by the first full pay period after 1 April 2023 so you will need to check what rates of pay your employees are on and increase them if necessary. The below rates are effective from 1 April 2023.
National Living Wage
£10.42
21-22 year old Rate
£10.18
18-20 year old Rate
£7.49
16-17 year old Rate
£5.28
Apprentice Rate (if aged 19 or over and in the first year of their apprenticeship)
£5.28
It is also a perfect time to switch payroll providers so if you would like us to take over your payroll service, please contact me.
In this issue we have;
Right to Work Checks – what you should be doing as an employer.
The Personal Tax Account.
Pension tracer service from GOV.UK
If you require any assistance, further guidance, or want an update on a specific area to appear in our next update, even if we do not currently provide you with payroll services, please contact me on 01422 331001 or email katesmurthwaite@spenserwilson.co.uk and I will be happy to help you.
Right to work checks – what you should be doing as an employer
One done using an approved specialist service provider
Or via the Home Office online Employer Checking Service if you know they have an open immigration appeal.
The most popular method for British citizens is a manual check as the employee can bring their documents in to you for checking and copying prior to them starting work. You must ensure that you have checked the information fully making sure that their appearance and information is consistent across all documents.
Acceptable documents can be found by following the link above, but they include Passports, birth certificates, and immigration status documents. You should ensure that you retain the copies of these documents and clearly write the date the check was performed on the documents.
The Personal Tax Account – HMRC
The Personal Tax Account is a HMRC gateway that allows you to view and amend much of your information held by HMRC. We would advise everyone to have an account as it is your own responsibility to ensure that HMRC have the correct information.
Assisting your employees to set up this service would be beneficial for employers too, as any queries employees have with their Income Tax or Tax code could be easily checked and rectified if needed. You can also check your state pension entitlement, tax credits, Marriage Allowances and much more.
This link will take them to where they can set a gateway account up. https://www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account. They will need a few personal details to hand before they sign up so that HMRC can verify they are who they say they are.
The Pensions Tracing Service – GOV.UK
The Department for Work & Pensions has provided a pension tracing service, this was launched to help people quickly and easily locate their lost pension savings. People can have many different jobs throughout their lifetime which means that they could have multiple pension pots with many different providers, losing details of some of them could be easily done.
The service is simple to use and should provide results immediately, you will just need your employer details which you enter into the database, and they then provide you with contact details for the pension scheme that employer uses.
