Over the last few weeks we have published several surveys, which arose not as a result of official government consultations, but because different organisations have been keen to understand the views of CIPP members when they have been preparing future policies. As a result, whilst your views have been fed back to these organisations, we have not needed to prepare formal consultation responses, so you may have been wondering about the outcome of these surveys.
Below is a summary of three recent informal surveys on SSP record-keeping; Collection of Student Loans; and informing the Liberal Democrat taxation policy.
SSP Record-keeping 82% of those who replied to this survey said that their SSP records were kept as part of a wider record keeping requirement (HR for example) and as such 65% said that abolishing the requirement to keep records for SSP would not save them any time. Of those who would save time, it was apparent that these savings were not significant with most saying that the savings would be less than 5%. Collection of Student Loans Following the last meeting of the Collection of Student Loans consultation forum, both HMRC and BIS had ideas they were keen to test out with CIPP members. Looking at HMRC’s question first, they were keen to understand how best to utilise RTI when accounting for student loan repayments. Of the three options suggested, CIPP members preferred the idea that HMRC report each individual repayment deducted by an employer on each pay day to the Student Loan Company (SLC) and SLC credit the borrower account by pay period, so individual deductions shown on the SL statement tie in with customer payslips. BIS asked if employers would consider providing advice and support to employees who would over-repay their student loan from deductions made by employers. Though by no means a unanimous response, the majority of respondents suggested that it was not the employer’s responsibility to provide this type of advice. Liz Cunningham, who chairs the Collection of Student Loans Consultation Group , would like to thank CIPP members for taking the time to provide their views as this has really helped HMRC as they look to see how best to utilise RTI in designing any future process for collecting student loan repayments. Liberal Democrat Taxation Policy Looking to formulate their taxation policy, the Liberal Democrat party were canvassing public opinion on a range of questions covering the breadth of taxation regimes. Focussing only on those affecting payroll, the CIPP survey was still quite lengthy. Summarising the key findings: All respondents agreed with the proposal that the tax free threshold should be increased to the level of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) over the course of the next parliament. All respondents agreed that the personal allowance should continue to increase in line with the NMW to prevent NMW earners being caught in the tax net. All respondents agreed with that all rates of income tax, including the additional rate of 45% should remain unchanged. Although 80% of respondents agreed with the idea of calculating income tax and NIC on annual income, opinion was divided on whether income tax and NIC should be merged or remain separate. When looking at whether benefits in kind should be subject to both tax and NICs, there was a mixed reaction with 60% agreeing. When the same question was asked about pension contributions, 80% said no, pension contributions should not be subject to NIC.
CIPP Policy News Journal
16/04/2014, Page 55 of 519
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