MEMBER TAKEOVER
employees, not approximately right but exactly right. I still recall my early efforts to make payrolling of benefits easier. I suggested that it might help payroll teams if we followed the practice in the United States of asking employers to report the cash equivalents of benefits approximately during the year but accurately at the year end. My payroll friends were aghast, insisting they had to produce accurate figures every payday. One of my regular challenges over the years was to convince HMRC colleagues that this determination to get things right distinguished the payroll community (except for a very few bad apples) from some of HMRC’s other customers, who were suspected of always looking for ways to circumvent the rules. It astonished some HMRC folk when I showed them, for example, that most employers paid their monthly PAYE dues on time every month, without any statutory penalties for paying late. The large employer who told me how they deliberately frustrated HMRC by sending a staff member to deliver a cheque to a far distant local tax office
every month – and thus delaying payment by a few more days – was very much in the minority. However, it was one of the examples that prompted HMRC to legislate in 2010 to ensure all employer payments were received as cleared funds by the due date each payday. A reflection Looking back, I hope I introduced some changes which made life easier for payroll professionals – and at the same time for HMRC colleagues. I was always on the lookout for ‘win-win’ initiatives, and CIPP friends were always on hand to encourage and support them. I would like to think that relations between the payroll industry and HMRC are these days much more of a partnership, a word which I don’t believe anyone on either side would have used back in 2000. I’ve been given a lot of opportunities to help the CIPP, work which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and still do today, 11 years since my retirement from HMRC. And these opportunities have ranged right across the range of CIPP activities and services, enabling
me to keep pursuing my ‘win-win’ approach. I was co-opted as a director for 18 months, which helped me to understand how the various ingredients of the CIPP offering hang together and hopefully to help steer improvements. I also produced News Online for a year, and updated examination questions and answers, among other tasks I’ve been asked to undertake at various times. But my main contribution to the CIPP in recent years has been the PAS, which I first created and introduced ten years ago. I conducted the very first assessment in December 2012 and have watched and assisted with massive improvements since those early beginnings, taking on board the ideas and experience of dozens of payroll experts. I may be biased, but if readers haven’t yet looked at having a PAS assessment, I’d thoroughly encourage them to pursue that. So, I can look back on some excellent opportunities across the decades in both HMRC and CIPP. I am left with some very satisfying memories and some wonderful friendships. n
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Visit cipp.org.uk/study , email enquiries@cipp.org.uk or call 0121 712 1044 for more information.
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 86 | December 2022 – January 2023
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