If you or your partner currently receive any of the following then Universal Credit will eventually affect you:
• Working tax credit
• Child tax credits
• Income based job seekers allowance
• Income related employment and support allowance
• Income support
• Housing benefit
Universal credit is the government’s attempt to simplify the welfare system and to provide a greater incentive for people on benefits to work by ensuring they do not lose out financially. The government also hopes that it will reduce the amount of over/underpayment errors and fraud within the system.
It is already being trialed in parts of Greater Manchester and Cheshire and will be rolled out across the rest of the UK in phases between October 2013 and October 2017.
Claims for UC will be joint, as is currently the case for tax credits, but instead of weekly or fortnightly payments, under UC a single payment for the household will be made directly to a bank or building society account once a month. All claims will have to be made online.
The Department of Work and Pensions will receive information about earnings from HMRC (under Real Time Information reporting) and this will allow them to adjust the UC payment each month based on changes to income levels.
If you receive any of the benefits or credits listed above there is nothing you need to right now - continue to claim as normal and keep the DWP up to date with any changes to your circumstances.
Showing posts with label tax credits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tax credits. Show all posts
Monday, 16 September 2013
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
RTI for Seasonal Workers
Have you taken on casual workers this summer? Perhaps you are paying piece-rates for the amount of produce picked or packed by each person. Reporting such small and variable payments under the new RTI system is a significant hassle.
The RTI rules require you to report each payment to workers on or before the date of the payment. Fortunately you may be able to use one of these two concessions to ease your RTI reporting burden:
a) Where you pay your causal workers daily or more than once a week, but the amounts paid are less than £109 per person per week, you can send RTI reports to HMRC weekly; or
b) Where the total number of your employees, including casual workers, is less than 50, you can send your RTI reports to HMRC on a monthly basis.
Concession b) will only apply for payments made before 6 April 2014.
Your casual workers are likely to have no set working hours for each week. In effect they will be on a zero-hours contract; paid for the hours they work, but otherwise not at all. In such cases you should choose option D of hours worked on the FPS report under RTI.
The Government wants employers to report data on the hours worked by employees in order to prevent fraud in the Tax Credits system. Under Universal Credit the hours worked will not be relevant to the employee's claim, so in time when all claimants are moved from Tax Credits to Universal Credit, the requirement to report hours worked should be dropped.
The RTI rules require you to report each payment to workers on or before the date of the payment. Fortunately you may be able to use one of these two concessions to ease your RTI reporting burden:
a) Where you pay your causal workers daily or more than once a week, but the amounts paid are less than £109 per person per week, you can send RTI reports to HMRC weekly; or
b) Where the total number of your employees, including casual workers, is less than 50, you can send your RTI reports to HMRC on a monthly basis.
Concession b) will only apply for payments made before 6 April 2014.
Your casual workers are likely to have no set working hours for each week. In effect they will be on a zero-hours contract; paid for the hours they work, but otherwise not at all. In such cases you should choose option D of hours worked on the FPS report under RTI.
The Government wants employers to report data on the hours worked by employees in order to prevent fraud in the Tax Credits system. Under Universal Credit the hours worked will not be relevant to the employee's claim, so in time when all claimants are moved from Tax Credits to Universal Credit, the requirement to report hours worked should be dropped.
Friday, 4 March 2011
Taxman to Hassle Tax Cheats
In addition to the 50,000 letters being sent about keeping business records, the Taxman is writing to 12,000 self-employed people who claim Tax Credits, to check whether they have been understating their income.
As a self-employed person you can claim Child and Working Tax Credits just like an employee, but your self-employed income is likely to be more variable than a regular wage or salary. If the income from your self-employed business has fluctuated wildly during the past recession, you may well get one of those letters from the Taxman. You will be asked to supply evidence of your income, which will normally be your business accounts and possibly bank statements. We can help you compile the information requested.
The Taxman is also getting serious about tackling those who deliberately cheat the tax system, as opposed to those who make careless mistakes.
He is targeting individuals and businesses identified as deliberate tax cheats since April 2009, and will regularly monitor all aspects of that person's tax affairs. This will involve asking for further information to support figures on tax returns, and possibly making unannounced visits to business premises.
The monitoring will continue for two to five years, or as long as the Taxman thinks the person is a tax risk. Initially, about 900 people will soon be informed they are included in this monitoring scheme but this number may well increase in time.
As a self-employed person you can claim Child and Working Tax Credits just like an employee, but your self-employed income is likely to be more variable than a regular wage or salary. If the income from your self-employed business has fluctuated wildly during the past recession, you may well get one of those letters from the Taxman. You will be asked to supply evidence of your income, which will normally be your business accounts and possibly bank statements. We can help you compile the information requested.
The Taxman is also getting serious about tackling those who deliberately cheat the tax system, as opposed to those who make careless mistakes.
He is targeting individuals and businesses identified as deliberate tax cheats since April 2009, and will regularly monitor all aspects of that person's tax affairs. This will involve asking for further information to support figures on tax returns, and possibly making unannounced visits to business premises.
The monitoring will continue for two to five years, or as long as the Taxman thinks the person is a tax risk. Initially, about 900 people will soon be informed they are included in this monitoring scheme but this number may well increase in time.
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