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Responsibilities as an employer.
If you are employing staff on a
professional basis, you will be subject to certain
legal obligations, governed by employment and tax
law in the UK. These include.
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Name of employer and employee
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Job title
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Start date
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Place of work
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Salary details
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Duties
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Contractual hours and
specifics of overtime
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Sickness entitlement and
holiday entitlement.
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Length of notice required to
terminate contract.
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Details of disciplinary and
grievance procedures.
Registering with the Inland
Revenue
If you employ domestic staff in
the UK and pay more than £91 per week, you are
required by law to register as an employer with the
Inland Revenue and operate a PAYE scheme. These
obligations also apply:
If your domestic staff earn less
than £79 per week in your employment but more than
£91 in total (e.g. if they have 2 part time jobs).
In short term employment (i.e. a week or longer). To
any employment taking place in the UK – irrespective
of the country of origin of the domestic staff or
employer.
Failure to register as an
employer if you are paying your domestic staff above
the weekly threshold is an offence, which can
potentially lead to heavy penalties and
career-damaging publicity. More information can be
found on the Inland Revenue website.
Operating PAYE
When you employ someone in the
UK, you must pay regular income tax and National
Insurance contributions on their behalf. You must
also pay employers National Insurance contributions;
this is not part of the gross cost and should be
taken into consideration when you are calculating
the overall cost of employing someone. As you are
classed as a small employer you only have to pay
these liabilities to the Inland Revenue by the 19th
of the month following the end of each calendar
quarter. For new employers the first payment will
only be due once the new PAYE scheme has been set up
by the Inland Revenue, and you will not be penalized
if this is after the due date for any of the first
three quarters of the tax year (starting in April).
Your new employee needs to
provide you with a P45, which summarises pay and tax
received so far in the current tax year, so that you
can prepare the P11 (deduction working sheet) or
complete a P46 to send to the Inland Revenue. If
your new employee does not have a National Insurance
number you will be required to apply for this.
Whenever an employee leaves your employment you are
required by law to provide them with a P45. This
enables the next employer to deduct the correct
amount of income tax. For more comprehensive
information on this subject, please refer to the
Inland Revenue website.
Filing employers annual tax
return
At the end of every year, you
need to.
Send a return to the Inland
Revenue office showing details of your employee’s
total pay, tax and National Insurance contributions.
Send details to the Inland
Revenue about certain expenses you have paid to your
employee, or benefits you have provided them with.
Give your employee a certificate
showing their pay, tax and National Insurance
contributions for the year.
Give your employee a copy of the
information you have given the Inland Revenue
office about their expenses, payments and benefits
provided.
This obligation has defined dates
by which you need to complete the returns. Failure
to do this can lead to fines.
If, however you require a
temporary or part time domestic staff (like most of
our clients) then registering with the Inland
Revenue is not needed. But you will have to set out
in writing the terms and conditions of the contract.
Most of our temporary staff are
registered self employed and are responsible for the
payment of their taxes and National Insurance,
though we can help with any paperwork.
Fees
To secure a placement, we require
a 50% deposit with the remaining balance payable 4 weeks
in advance of the start
of the job. If there is less than 4 weeks prior to
commencement that full balance must be paid. Please
note we will not confirm an applicant for your
vacancy until the deposit has been paid.
Keeping in touch
We will always be a phone call
away from you and you can always call us if you want
any staff to be replaced, or have any other concerns
or queries.
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