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27/06/2011 by Geoff.
The Income Tax (Pay As You Earn) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 come into force on 6 April 2011.
At present, when a payment is made to a departed employee after their P45 has been produced, income tax is deducted at basic rate only (and they are responsible for any additional tax) using a “BR” tax code. After 6 April 2011, tax at the full 20%, 40% or 50% rates must be deducted from post-termination payments (using the “0T” tax code).
Written by Sue Gott - one of our HR professionals
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27/06/2011 by Geoff.
For those of you uncomfortable with computer jargon phishing is defined in Wikipedia as “a way of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”In other words fraudsters are emailing taxpayers and pretending to be HM Revenue & Customs. Some of their antics are becoming quite sophisticated but all are designed to encourage you to part with sensitive personal information; particularly your credit card details!HMRC have confirmed that they would never email taxpayers about any of the following issues, all of which have been the subject of bogus email campaigns.
This is what HMRC have published on their web site:“HMRC will never send notifications of a tax rebate by email, or ask you to disclose personal or payment information by email.You should never disclose your personal and/or payment information in reply to an email that may look like it’s from HMRC, you may well be revealing your details to a fraudulent website.If you have received an email claiming to be from HMRC that you suspect may be fraudulent, please forward it to phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk. However, if you have already given any of your personal information, for example your HMRC User ID, password or National Insurance number, in reply to a suspect email please forward brief details to security.custcon@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk.Please do not disclose any of your personal details or information in the email report to HMRC. However it would help HMRC to investigate if you would tell us the type(s) of information that you disclosed to the suspect website. For example - I gave my Name, Address, Date of Birth, bank card details, HMRC User ID etc.HMRC will attempt to provide a response to all HMRC related phishing emails and take action to remove reported websites.”
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27/06/2011 by Geoff.
From the 5 April 2012 the most you can accumulate in a pension fund will fall from £1.8m to £1.5m - the so-called lifetime allowance.HMRC have now agreed draft legislation to protect your position if your fund exceeded, or was expected to exceed £1.5m at 5 April 2011.The proposed protection scheme, known as ‘fixed protection’, is designed to benefit individuals with pension savings that are already in excess of £1.5 million, or individuals who believe that their pension savings will exceed £1.5 million (by virtue of investment growth only, without making any additional contributions) by the time that they come to take their benefits.Fixed protection will protect all pension savings up to £1.8 million from the lifetime allowance charge. In effect individuals will be in the same position as they were before these changes. However, fixed protection will only continue to apply where an individual makes no further contributions to any existing defined contribution schemes, or receives no increase in benefit under a defined benefit arrangement above a set level. No new pension arrangements are able to be opened either, unless they are only to receive a transfer of rights.Fixed protection must be applied for by 5 April 2012, and once given, you will be responsible for advising HMRC if you cease to meet the relevant conditions.
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27/06/2011 by Geoff.
If your business accounts for VAT under the flat rate scheme, the sale of a second hand car creates an unwelcome complication - the car must be included in the flat rate takings for the period. This means that although there is no VAT charged on the sale, and no VAT would have been reclaimed on the purchase of the vehicle, the business must account for VAT at their normal flat rate on the proceeds of sale.Accordingly if you sell a car for £1,000 and your VAT flat rate percentage is 10%, you will have to pay £100 to the VAT man!If the sale price of the car is considerable, the only possible solution is to exit the flat rate scheme before sale, but this extreme step would only be appropriate if enough cash was at stake. It is not then possible to rejoin the scheme for 12 months.
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