HMRC PAYE System Delay.

HMRC’s Pay As You Earn modernisation programme, intended to bring details together on to one central system, has been suspended due to the workload created by the ‘emergency budget’.

The system had been due to go live in October this year, but this has now been delayed indefinitely and may not be completed in 2009.

The centralisation of the system would remove duplicate records that are currently held, thus decreasing the workload of keeping all information updated, making it more manageable and increasing security as duplicate content means an increased risk of data loss.

For further information, please visit Payroll World.

How will the September tax changes affect you?

Alistair Darling has performed an unprecedented u-turn as Chancellor by changing and back-dating income tax thresholds during the tax year.

Following the furore and political crisis that followed the elimination of the 10p tax band where millions of employees lost out, the latest action to reduce the impact is to increase the personal tax allowance by £600, for example the emergency tax code of 543L will change to 603L changing allowances from £5,435 to £6,035.

The amount of earnings on which the 20% tax is due will decrease from £36,000 to £34800 and as a result the higher rate threshold, the point from which 40% tax is due on earnings will be reduced from £41,435 to £40,835

The overall effect is to reduce the taxable pay of 20% tax payers by £600 during 2008/09, with a resulting fall of £120 in the amount of tax paid within the year. Monthly paid employees with cumulative tax codes will receive £60 of this £120 in their September pay, followed by £10 a month for the rest of the tax year. Weekly paid employees' net pay will increase by about £53 in week 23 and by about £2.30 per week thereafter. Employees with non-cumulative codes will receive an increase of £10 monthly paid or around £2.30 weekly paid, and will receive the full increase when either they are given a cumulative code during the tax year or after the year end when their full liability for the year has been determined.

So what effect will this have on us? Well, from an employee's point of view the major changes will be that anyone not exceeding the new £6,035 allowance will stop paying tax altogether but if their pay exceeds that amount and they are cumulative paid they will be paying £120 less tax over the year. There are unfortunately still downsides in the new Personal Tax Allowance. Employees who earn between £6,035 and £10,510 will still pay more tax than they would have done if the 10% rate had remained in place. At the same time employees earnings between £16,000 and £40,000 who already benefit from the April 2008 changes are gaining a further £120 in their net pay.

There are no changes to the age 65 and 75 personal allowances. These have already been increased substantially from April 2008.

Employers will receive a letter from the HMRC warning them of the change to the tax bands and personal allowances sometime in July/August but here at Qtac we will be going that step further and be distributing an update to all of our customers, which will simply update all L suffix codes and tax bands within our client's payroll so that our clients can continue their daily duties with little interruption. If you are using any Qtac Payroll Products payroll software full instructions will be given in plenty of time but importantly remember that you must implement changes after the last payday before 7th September.

The Paperless Payroll: A Way to Save Money and Go Green.

Despite the increased use of the Internet and computing technology as a whole, paper consumption, for most businesses, is actually increasing by 20% every year. From printing out e-mails to web pages, offices produce large amounts of paper waste. Unnecessary paper consumption is costly, wastes time and decreases productivity.

Payroll bureaux require cheques and reports to be produced periodically, which are generally posted to the recipient (whether it is an employee or employer). Even for a local payroll this would mean a trip of several miles before delivery of the documents. But this does not take into account the other paper-consuming activities of the typical payroll department such as faxes, reports for reconciliation, reports printed in error and archived documentation.

So, how much does the average payroll bureau spend on producing all of this documentation AND more importantly how much can be saved by going paperless?

We surveyed The Payroll Department, a payroll services company based in Bristol. They run 120 payrolls per month, varying in size from one to several hundred employees. It’s estimated that the total amount the bureau spends on all document printing, filing and storage (associated with payroll) is £3259 per year.

Qtac’s payroll software has the ability to export all reports into several formats including Excel Spreadsheets and Adobe PDF. Our professional software goes one step further allowing users to email payslips automatically to all employees in a company payroll.

A pleasant result for a business intending to go ‘paperless’ would not only save money, but would also:

• Reduce deforestation as no requirement for paper.
• Reduce energy consumption, used in production of paper and transportation.
• Reduce greenhouse emissions by cutting out delivery of documents.
• Generate no waste, so less land filling.

Do you want to know how much you could you save?

Use our paperless payroll cost saving calculator now to see the benefits of going green!

What else can we do to ‘Go Green’ at work?

• Turn off lights and electronic equipment when not needed.
• Use recycled paper and source recycled documents (like payslips).
• Recycle as much as possible.
• Invest in company cars with low emissions.
• Make the most of government incentives and schemes (like the Government Cycle to Work Scheme).
• Try to create a recycling buzz in the office!

Useful links:

Qtac Payroll Products - Payroll Software for a paperless office.

Payroll Outsourcing from The Payroll Department

Microsoft.com – 6 Tips for a paperless office

And there's more !!!

Friday 5 September 19.30 - Monday 8 September

Due to essential maintenance you may experience a delay in receiving your acceptance/rejection response to your submissions for this service, if you use HMRC software or our payroll software between 19.30 on Friday 5 September and Monday 8 September. The HMRC aim to keep any disruption to a minimum. They will make every effort to restore the service before Monday 8 September.

We here at Qtac would also like to apologise for the lack of variety of the last few posts, but unfortunately we have no control over this! We promise that the next post will be more interesting!

More HMRC Service Shortages...

Wednesday 10 September 00.00 - 06.00

Due to a scheduled upgrade, this service will be unavailable to users of HMRC software between 00.00 and 06.00 on Wednesday 10 September. Qtac payroll software users will be unable to submit their returns or view PAYE notices, notifications and reminders at this time.