In April 2020, the government are planning to make changes to the employment allowance. Since 2014 many businesses have been able to claim £3,000 per year as a deduction against Class 1 NI, but from April things are changing!
Here is a quick summary
Employers won’t automatically qualify for the EA (Employment Allowance) and must claim it each year. This will mean submitting a declaration confirming that you’ve checked and qualify by meeting the eligibility conditions.
Employer with more than £100k of Class 1 NI won’t qualify
Connected employers won’t qualify – sharing staff, premises or other resources
EA will be counted as State Aid and the maximum state aid allowed is 200,000 euros
So even if items 2 to 4 don’t apply, item 1 will apply to every business wanting to make a claim.
She has a point, £2,000 will be a big help to many SME’s.
The Employment Allowance is available from 6 April 2014. If you are eligible you can reduce your employer Class 1 NICs by up to £2,000 each tax year.
You can claim the Employment Allowance if you are a business or charity (including Community Amateur Sports Clubs) that pays employer Class 1 NICs on your employees’ or directors’ earnings.
If your company belongs to a group of companies or your charity is part of a charities structure, only one company or charity can claim the allowance. It is up to you to decide which company or charity will claim the allowance.
You can only claim the £2,000 Employment Allowance against one PAYE scheme – even if your business runs multiple schemes.
You cannot claim the Employment Allowance, for example if you:
employ someone for personal, household or domestic work, such as a nanny, au pair, chauffeur, gardener, care support worker
already claim the allowance through a connected company or charity
are a public authority, this includes; local, district, town and parish councils
carry out functions either wholly or mainly of a public nature (unless you have charitable status), for example:
NHS services
General Practitioner services
the managing of housing stock owned by or for a local council
providing a meals on wheels service for a local council
refuse collection for a local council
prison services
collecting debt for a government department
You do not carry out a function of a public nature, if you are:
providing security and cleaning services for a public building, such as government or local council offices
supplying IT services for a government department or local council
Personal and Managed Service Companies who pay contract fees instead of a wage or salary, may not be able to claim the Employment Allowance, as you cannot claim the allowance for any deemed payments of employment income.
Service companies can only claim the allowance, if you pay earnings and have an employer Class 1 NICs liability on these earnings.
You can use your own payroll software (see your software provider’s instructions), or HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC’s) Basic PAYE Tools to claim the Employment Allowance.
When you make your claim (using the software of your choice), you must reduce your employer Class 1 NICs payment by an amount of Employment Allowance equal to your employer Class 1 NICs due, but not more than £2,000 per year.
On the 6th April 2014 the personal allowance will increase to £10,000 (up £560) which means you can earn £10,000 before you pay income tax.
But you might want to keep your earnings below the NI Threshold, in previous years the employers and employee’s NI thresholds have been out of alignment but from 6th April 2014 they will be aligned, which means that earnings over £153 per week (£7,956 per year) will attract both 12% employees’ NI and 13.8% employers’ NI. For earnings above £805 per week (£41,865 per year), the employees’ NI rate drops to 2% but the employers’ NI rate remains unchanged.
So to avoid Income Tax and NI you would need to earn below £7,956.
But, there is some good news, from April 2014 there is a new ’employment allowance’ of £2,000 which you can offset against your employers NI.
