TECHNOLOGY
How are software developers preparing for the new tax year?
Neil Tonks, legislationmanager ChMCIPPdip at MHR International discusses thework that software developers carry out when preparing for the new tax year
T hese days, nearly all payroll teams make use of software to perform the routine processing that goes into calculating, paying, reporting and accounting for what is one of the biggest costs in most businesses: the employees. Software products are continually updated, ensuring they remain compliant with market expectations and legislation, which the UK and Irish governments and beyond continue to generate. What changes are required? As a software and service provider, how do we make sure our products have the functionality that’s required, especially for changes driven by legislation? The first thing we need to do is find out exactly what changes are required. This is harder than you might think. Government announcements are very often just ‘highlights’, with the detail provided later. We can’t make any amendments to our payroll systems to support the changes until we have that detail, so it’s vital that we’re pro-active in getting hold of it, sometimes facing very tight deadlines to ensure we get all the right information. For instance, we knew in the autumn
of 2020 that for 2022/23, there would be a National Insurance (NI) category to provide employer’s relief when employing veterans in their first year of civilian employment. We also knew there would be a way for employers to use the full payment submission to reclaim the NI paid in respect of 2021/22 when the new category wasn’t available. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2021 that the category (V) and the detail of the reclaim mechanism were released. Government announcements are very often just ‘highlights’, with the detail provided later
meetings. These days they generally take place online via Teams or Zoom but pre- pandemic, visits to government offices were the order of the day. Many of these events are regular consultation forums between software developers and civil servants. Sometimes they are hosted by government departments such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), while others are held by professional bodies, such as the British Computer Society. There are also ad-hoc meetings dealing with specific upcoming changes, where the impact is sufficiently wide-ranging and the timescale allows for it. The CIPP contributes much to this process. There’s the technical panel, which has a remit to consider the impact of government initiatives on payroll generally, and policy roundtable events, which concentrate on a specific topic. We find these useful because the discussion isn’t limited to the technical aspects of a change, but also covers the practical challenges faced by payroll professionals. Finally, we get a lot of assistance from the CIPP’s policy and research team, both from the various publications they
Research time The process of investigating and
extrapolating the right details involves several stages and plans of action. First, of course, meetings. Sometimes, several
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | February 2022 | Issue 77 38
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