However, the demands on payment systems are changing rapidly, and the UK’s fragmented and restrictive messaging standards mean today’s systems are not best placed to respond. Inconsistent standards make it difficult and expensive to move customers’ payments seamlessly across domestic systems, complicate the management of operational outages, and pose barriers to competition and innovation by requiring new payments providers to develop bespoke technology to access each system. Narrow messaging standards limit the amount of information that can be provided to support crucial business processes such as reconciliation and compliance, increasing costs for payment service providers and end-users. And a lack of harmonisation between the United Kingdom and other countries impedes the smooth transmission of cross-border payments. The introduction of a common global messaging standard, known as ‘ISO 20022’ offers the opportunity to make payment systems work better for everyone. The Bank of England has committed to introduce ISO 20022 for the high- value payments system CHAPS. And the UK retail schemes moving to ISO 20022 was a key requirement of the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) when it concluded its market review into effective competition of central infrastructure services. Adopting this global standard has the potential to deliver significant long-term benefits to the economy including increased interoperability, and richer and more structured information. The common, flexible design would help facilitate further innovation and competition in the payments industry; it would also improve back office efficiency and resilience by aligning payments messaging both across the UK and internationally. For more information, or to register your organisation to take part in the consultation, you can contact RTGSEngagement@bankofengland.co.uk or visit the Bank of England’s website to access the Consultation on a new messaging standard for UK payments: ISO 20022.
The deadline for responses is Wednesday 18 July 2018, 5pm.
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Abolition of receipt checking for benchmark scale rates and changes to overseas scale rates 16 July 2018 As announced at Autumn Statement 2017 from April 2019, receipts for subsistence reimbursement will no longer need to be checked by employers. Also, the concessionary accommodation and subsistence overseas scale rates will become statutory.
Both of these measures will save time and provide clarity for employers.
The draft Finance Bill 2018-19 includes the measure which abolishes receipt checking by employers when they reimburse benchmark scale rate, overseas scale rates, or qualifying expenses incurred travelling to work.
This clause removes the requirement for employers to check receipts or other forms of documentary evidence of the amounts spent by employees when using the HMRC benchmark scale rates to pay or reimburse their employees’ qualifying subsistence expenses. This measure will allow HMRC to bring the concessionary exemption for overseas scale rates into legislation. Similar to benchmark scale rates, there will be no requirement for employers to check amounts spent in order to pay or reimburse employee expenses using overseas scale rates free from tax, but they will need to ensure the employees are undertaking qualifying travel on the occasions in respect of which a payment is made or reimbursed.
If you have any questions about this change, or comments on the legislation, please contact the Employment Income Team email: employmentincome.policy@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk.
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The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals
Payroll: need to know
cipp.org.uk
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