Volunteers needed for review of voluntary payrolling BiKs and expenses
16 April 2018
HMRC has put out a further call to agents, employers and software developers to volunteer their views on the delivery and implementation of the policy on voluntary payrolling of benefits in kind (BiKs) and expenses.
HMRC is interested in gaining your views, not only on the delivery and implementation of this policy but to also identify any lessons that may have been learnt and/or to hear about anything HMRC could have done differently.
Volunteers are welcomed from those who payrolled before and after April 2016 and HMRC is also particularly interested in insight from those who do not currently payroll.
Background
-
In 2013 the Office for Tax Simplification reviewed how employee benefits and expenses were handled and produced a report with recommendations
-
In response to those recommendations, HMRC consulted on the real-time collection of tax on BiKs and expenses through voluntary payrolling; the outcome was an announcement in November 2014 stating that employers could sign up to voluntarily payroll through Real Time Information (RTI) from April 2016
-
This allowed an employer to opt out of payrolling certain benefits through a P11D form and instead report the value of certain BiKs through RTI. The BiKs affected were cars, car fuel, medical insurance and gym membership. This formalised arrangements that had already been in place for many employers
Current position
-
HMRC is now interested in gaining agents, employers and software developer views on the delivery and implementation of this policy, to identify any lessons learnt or hear about anything it could have done differently. This will help HMRC to consider how it can improve the delivery of future key policy objectives
-
There are no active plans to revisit or change this policy at the present time and this consultation exercise is different to the one that took place in 2014. This is an internal review to understand how the policy is operating, identify where there are obstacles and enable an easier process for agents and employers to payroll BiKs
Next steps
Once the review is complete the aim will be for HMRC to consider the responses carefully before promoting the use of payrolling through RTI
Invite
HMRC would appreciate your views and ask if you would volunteer to participate in a 30 to 45 minute pre-arranged phone interview to answer some questions from:
-
Companies who were already payrolling pre the changes
-
Companies who began payrolling in April 2016
-
Companies who do not currently payroll
-
Payrolling Software companies
HMRC aim to carry out the interviews from mid-April onwards and would appreciate it if any volunteers could please respond with your contact details to [email protected], copying in [email protected].
HMRC will then contact you to arrange a suitable time to call.
Should you have any further queries please telephone Victor Rushton on 03000 592683.