Policy News Journal - 2015-16

Your employees can use their Personal Tax Account to:

 check their Income Tax estimate and tax code  tell HMRC about a change of address  check or update their company car details  check and manage medical benefits that affect their tax  apply for Marriage Allowance  manage ‘trusted helpers’ – register to help friends or family with their tax, or appoint friends or family to help them  track tax iForms that they have submitted online.

More services will be added in the future.

By encouraging your employees to access their Personal Tax Account online you should get fewer enquiries. They will be able to check their coding, and any changes they need to make are made in real time.

At the beginning of February 2016 HMRC started to issue the P2 annual notices of coding to individual employees for the tax year beginning 6 April 2016. These include an insert that refers to the Personal Tax Account and the online help provided explains how individuals can access it. Employees who do that will be able to view and amend their coding online where appropriate.

By April 2016, almost every individual will be able to access their own digital account – simple, personalised and secure, offering an increasing range of services.

This information was included in HMRC’s February 2016 Employer Bulletin: Issue 58.

Transfer of surplus Income Tax allowances (575(T)) 18 February 2016

Form 575(T) should be used to request a transfer from HMRC of any unused Married Couple's Allowance or Blind Person's Allowance to your spouse or civil partner.

Form 575(T) should be used if you had surplus tax allowance in the most recent tax year and you want to transfer these to your husband, wife or civil partner, even if they have already had some of your allowance in their PAYE code.

Politics Home has reported that of the 4 million married couples and 15,000 civil partners that the PM claimed would benefit from the Married Couples Allowance, only 330,000 couples have signed up in the first year. The tax break was aimed at helping couples in which one parent does not work, because they are looking after a child, however the scheme is only applicable to couples in which one adult earns under £42,385 and the other earns less than the tax free personal allowance of £10,600. Tory MP David Burrowes, who campaigned for the introduction of the policy, said it should be “more generous and more targeted at couples with young children. We need to make sure that our commitment to recognise marriage in the tax system is more than window dressing. I will be pressing the Treasury to increase uptake.”

HMRC Online Service login page change 1 March 2016

HMRC’s Software Developers Support Team (SDST) has provided information about changes to HMRC’s Government Gateway login page:

What is this change? 

We have updated the existing HMRC Government Gateway login page to provide a more secure page for all users. To do that we have created a new URL, improved the page design and introduced JavaScript-based security features on the new login page.

Why is HMRC making this change?

CIPP Policy News Journal

25/04/2016, Page 219 of 453

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