4 Week Payrolls lead to a £12m bill for Asda Employees….

Close up of payslip

Asda employ 170,000 UK staff and they have received final demands from HMRC for outstanding tax bills ranging from £72 to £160 because they all potentially underpaid income tax last year (according to the Courier and Payroll World).

Assuming each employee only has to pay back the minimum amount, then Asda employees across the UK will have to give more than £12 million back to the taxman.

May be Winston Harrigan could help them this weekend, he loves surprises…..

www.thecourier.co.uk reported

Employees receive their pay every four weeks. This means that once every 20 years they are paid 14 times a year rather than 13.

PAYE (Pay as You Earn) tax contributions were not collected in the extra pay, meaning employees had, through no fault of their own, paid less tax for the year than they should have.

Employees began receiving letters from HMRC demanding they settle their tax bills last week.

You can read Asda’s advice at http://greenroom.asda.com/news-and-info/colleagues-affected-by-underpayment-of-tax-for-year-ending-5th-april-2013

HMRC have published guidance ‘Dealing with Week 53 payments’

PAYE (Pay As You Earn) tax is deducted differently from ‘week 53’ payments. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) treats it as a non-cumulative payment (also known as ‘Week 1’), meaning that it is treated in isolation and tax is deducted without taking into account previous pay and tax details. So the tax code you use should be non-cumulative in all cases.

This advice has only been given since the tax year end.

steve@bicknells.net

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