PART 1: DATES, DEFINITIONS AND OBLIGATIONS
once the CJRS scheme closes on 30 September 2021. It is possible that the UK government is awaiting the results of the vaccination programme which is underway before determining what measures, if any, are required further into the new tax year. Holiday pay and entitlement Whilst it would seem obvious the Government confirmed that the entitlement to paid annual leave continued to accrue during a period of furlough, whether the employer made claims for CJRS or not. It was also made clear that employers who agreed to allow their employees to take annual leave, or in some cases insisted the employees took holiday, were not permitted to claim CJRS for the same period. COPYRIGHT © 2021 THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF PAYROLL PROFESSIONALS The rules for carrying forward entitlement to paid annual holiday were relaxed in order to deal with the inevitable situation where employees were unable to take their holidays. The Working Time (Coronavirus)(Amendment) Regulations 2020 give employees the right to carry forward holiday entitlement where the impact of the virus has meant they were unable to take leave. This measure only applies to the four weeks entitlement and the usual rule forbidding employers to buy-out any of the four week entitlement remain in place. The measure also applies to furloughed agency workers. Taxable expenses On 6th April 2020 the “working from home” allowance increased from £4 a week to £6 a week. This means an employer can make payments to employees of up to £6 a week, such allowance to cover the additional cost of running the home when it is occupied for far longer then usual. The allowance must include all aspects of working from home, such as power, insurance etc so the employer must aggregate all payments made and ensure it does not exceed an average of £6 a week, or £213 in total for the tax year. If this is the case then no Income Tax is due from the employee, no disclosure is required and there are no Class 1A NICs for the employer. The employer is required, however, to keep the necessary records to show that the allowance was justified. The allowance cannot be paid to an employee on furlough because due to the original nature of furlough the employee is not “working from home”; however, when flexible furlough was introduced in October 2020, the employee can be partly on furlough and partly working so the full allowance can be paid to cover each day the employee is actually working. No printing, copying or reproduction permitted. In addition to this the Government published a list, see https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how- to-treat-certain-expenses-and-benefits-provided-to-employees-during-coronavirus- covid-19 of different expenses and benefits provided to employees during the emergency period and what the taxable treatement of them should be. DATA PROTECTION The Data Protection Act 1998 was brought into effect from 1 March 2000, completely replacing The Data Protection Act 1984. The Act required employers to abide by principles relating to the processing of personal data extending protection to cover most paper records (termed as part of a ‘relevant filing system’) as well as those that are automatically processed by computer. The Act introduced eight principles by which employers had to abide. They are that data should be:
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