Business owners in the UK are being reminded to take sufficient measures to prepare their businesses for the upcoming changes to legislation regarding payroll, which will come into force on the 6 April 2019.
The changes to the legislation are being introduced in a bid to improve the transparency around worker’s pay and how it is calculated by employers, and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has published guidance in a bid to help businesses prepare for the changes.
This is the latest tactic from HMRC in their mission to crack down on payroll failings in relation to the National Minimum Wage (NMW), auto-enrolment pension contributions and company bosses wrongly defining workers as self-employed.
The new legislation will require employers to provide payslips to all workers, not just employees and most crucially show fully itemised payslips, with a clear breakdown of hours on payslips where the pay varies by the amount of time worked.
The HMRC guidance outlines that the hours can be shown either as a single total of all such hours in the pay period, or they can be broken down into separate figures for different types of work or different rates of pay. However, it should be clear which pay period they were worked in.
Payslips can be provided through printed or written document or even submitted to the employee electronically, as long as they receive it on or before their payday.
Ahead of the deadline, experts are urging businesses to act now to ensure a smooth transition, as it is believed that many businesses will need to completely revise their current payroll processes to ensure with they comply with the new changes, which could prove to be a time-consuming process.
