Communication

The Equality Act 2010 replaces all previous equality legislation, including the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006. The Equality Act covers age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy and maternity. These are now called ‘protected characteristics’.

The High Income Child Benefit charge applies to a taxpayer who has income over £50,000 in a tax year where either they or their partner, if they have one, are in receipt of Child Benefit for the year. We set out below the main points of the charge and illustrate some of the practical issues.

There have been many changes to employment law and regulations in the last few years. A key area is the freedom or lack of freedom to dismiss an employee. An employee’s employment can be terminated at any time but unless the dismissal is fair the employer may be found guilty of unfair dismissal by an Employment Tribunal.

In order to protect the firm, its employees, customers and suppliers, all members of staff should be given a copy of the firm’s policy regarding acceptable use of IT resources – particularly internet, email access, and data protection policies. It may also be necessary to have a separate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy covering the use of personal devices and to what extent (if any) these are permitted to connect to corporate information systems.

In order to set up a Pay As You Earn (PAYE) scheme with HMRC it is necessary to contact the New Employer’s Helpline on 0300 200 3211 or register online via the GOV.UK website. As an employer you will be responsible for operating PAYE and calculating National Insurance Contributions (NICs). There are also certain statutory payments you may have to make from time to time which you need to be aware of.

Research and development (R&D) by UK companies is being actively encouraged by the government through a range of tax incentives. The government views investment in research and development (‘R&D’) as a key to economic success. It is therefore committed to encouraging more smaller and medium sized (‘SME’) companies to claim R&D tax relief.