Payroll

You are self employed happily running your own business now the day has come you take on your first employee. Do you employ someone or do you let another self employed person work for you on an adhoc basis?

Many questions need to be asked;

• How much do you have to pay him or her?
• Do I need to take someone on permanently or on a temporary contract?
• Do I need to pay holiday pay?
• Do I need to provide a pension?
• What is their net pay?
• How do you calculate their tax and national insurance?
• Do I need employment contracts?
• Do you know that you are now an unpaid tax collector?
• Do I need a contract with my self employed subcontractor?
• Does the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) apply to me?

So you will be pleased that we offer a comprehensive and confidential payroll service, whether your business has just one employee or 100’s.

Many clients do not want or the burden of understanding complex taxation and employment legislation and do not wish to expose themselves to the risk of penalties for non-compliance.

Employee contracts will need to be drafted in case your relationship with your employee breaks down, and because you will need to guard against paying them a lot of your hard earned cash if they do a bad job. Employment legislation is now complex and you will need to follow procedures in the event should you need to Part Company with your employee to avoid tribunal, legal and compensation costs. We can help you in this area. You have heard the term red tape, now you know what it means.

The Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)

You need to know about this scheme if your business does any work connected with construction.

Be warned that it is illegal to pay someone for construction work who is not a fully fledged employee without first obtaining permission from HM Revenue & Customs.

The definition of construction activities is widely drawn and so most businesses working in construction will be caught by CIS. It will include any work on the construction of commercial or public sector buildings, private house construction, extensions or repairs in all these sectors.

So if you do work of this nature and hire someone to do work to help you (for example an electrician) on a self employed or subcontract work basis you need to operate the CIS scheme.

It is illegal to pay someone for construction related work without first checking with HM Revenue & Customs whether you are allowed to, this is called verification. HMRC will tell you if you can pay them and how much tax you should deduct, there are three rates; Gross (no tax deduction), Standard rate 20%, Higher rate 30%.

You will also need to register for the scheme if you are a subcontractor or you will find yourself being deducted 30% tax. If you are in any doubt contact us immediately.

We are also very experienced in Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) so can take the burden of these time consuming monthly returns from you, and tie them in with your monthly payroll payments.

Our payroll services include:

• Advice on minimum pay rates
• Administration of PAYE, National Insurance, Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay etc
• Completion of statutory forms including year-end returns for PAYE and Benefits in Kind for submission to the Inland Revenue
• Customised payslips and weekly or monthly summaries
• Administration of holiday entitlements and pension schemes

We will run your payrolls on time, weekly or monthly providing a tailor made service for your business including;

• Employee payslips
• Monthly summaries
• Departmental reports
• Dealing with leavers and starters
• Provision of analysis of staff costs
• PAYE returns for the Revenue
• Assistance with automated payment set-up to your employees

You will never have to worry about calculating statutory sick pay or maternity pay and dealing with tax credits and student loan deductions.

Annual PAYE returns need to be prepared every tax year these include;

• Employer Annual Return P35
• Employee summary P60's and P14's
• P11D and P9D benefit and expenses returns.

We will take care of these for you as well.

Over and above the basic number crunching payroll compliance service, we offer comprehensive advice on all employment tax issues as listed below;

• Related tax planning and advice on employees pay
• Tax efficient remuneration strategies
• Planning for retirement
• Termination payments
• Inducement payments
• Company car and van strategies
• Benefits planning