CIPP Survey - Employee Benefits and Expenses ? Abolition of the £8,500 threshold for lower paid employment and form P9D
16 July 2014
The 2011/12 tax year saw HMRC receive and process some 15,000 P9Ds and so it comes as little surprise that one of the proposals for simplification to the Benefits in Kind and Expenses process would be the abolition of the threshold of £8,500 which results in the need for a form P9D to be completed.
You will be aware that the Office of Tax Simplification has carried out a significant amount of research on the subject of Employee Benefits in Kind (BiKs) and Expenses and in response to the publication of the OTS Review of employee benefits and expenses: second report in January 2014, the government, at Budget 2014, announced that they would be consulting on a core package of four measures, with a view to introducing legislation in Finance Bill 2015.
The core package consists of the following changes:
- Abolishing the threshold for the taxation of BiKs for employees who earn less than £8,500 a year (‘lower paid’ employments), with action to mitigate the effects on any vulnerable groups disadvantaged by the reforms;
- Introducing a statutory exemption for trivial benefits;
- Introducing a system of voluntary Payrolling for BiKs; and,
- Replacing the expenses dispensation regime with an exemption for paid and reimbursed expenses.
Each change will be consulted on separately and the CIPP Policy team will be producing surveys for each to gather views, experiences and suggestions, which will form the basis of a formal response to each subject of change.
The first survey to be published is Employee Benefits and Expenses – Abolition of the £8,500 threshold for lower paid employment and form P9D. As mentioned above, the decision to abolish the threshold has been made, this consultation looks to identify which groups of employers, employees or ‘office holders’ will be affected and what actions might be taken to mitigate the effects of this abolition.
Views are welcomed from anyone with an interest however views from affected stakeholders for example, representatives from the voluntary sector, are particularly welcomed.
If your work or voluntary work currently requires you to complete forms P9D then it is likely that your experiences alone will be sufficient to answer this short survey. However you might still find it useful or interesting to review the contents of the consultation document before you do.
Thank you in advance for taking part in this short survey which will close on Friday 15 August.