Tax Association welcomes pause on trivial benefit provisions

by Susie Hughes at 11:11 07/04/15 (News on Business)

The Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT) has welcomed the Government’s announcement that proposed legislation on an exemption from income tax for ‘trivial’ benefits will be delayed.

The ATT had voiced concern that the proposals could have required employers to declare and tax many low value benefits which are currently untaxed. Advertisement Trivial benefits provided by employers, would include, for example, small benefits for employees such as gifts at Christmas. The ATT called for a delay in the implementation of the exemption arguing that more time was needed to allow adequate guidance to be prepared and shared with employers. Natalie Miller, President of the ATT, said: “The original proposal to change the definition of trivial benefits was put forward in an HMRC consultation last summer. Draft legislation for the new statutory exemption was then issued in December. We criticised the draft legislation as it appeared to miss the point of the consultation proposal which we thought had a much better chance of properly simplifying procedures for employers and HMRC in dealing with trivial benefits2. The draft legislation would have made life for employers more complicated as it suggested a significant change in what should be considered a trivial benefit. “We felt that HMRC’s understandable zeal to eliminate scope for potential abuse of the proposed exemption had undermined its very purpose, namely the removal of the administrative burden of reporting tax and NIC on low value benefits. “We are therefore pleased to see that the measure has been dropped from the pre-election Finance Bill. We hope that the Revenue will use the time afforded by the postponement to reconsider the finer details of some aspects of the policy, highlighted in our response.” The exemption was due to take effect from April 6, 2015. Tweet -- If you wish to comment on this article, please log in and use the Reply button below. Registering is free and easy - see 'Join Shout99'. - Susie Hughes © Shout99 2015

This article was printed from Shout99.com
Copyright 1999-2015 Shout99 Ltd
All Rights Reserved