Earnings Could be Handled by HMRC to Fix Tax System Errors

FinanceLoans / Lease

  • Author Thom Kloss
  • Published October 24, 2010
  • Word count 577

The Telegraph's recent report into the opportunity of HM Revenue and Customs taking direct command of every worker’s monthly pay is a potential train crash waiting to happen. After all why should we be literally "paying" for the errors of this government institution?

This proposal comes in the wake of recent controversy where approximately 15 million people have been affected by the miscalculation of tax which has led HMRC to make people pay pack underpaid tax. In fact they currently have at least 18 million cases relating to inaccurately paid tax dating back from 2008!

So how would this new scheme operate? Instead of the employers deducting income tax from monthly pay and then paying gross salaries directly to you, the employee, your gross monthly salary would go straight to a so called tax "calculator", run by the HMRC. Once completed they would then transfer the net salary to the worker.

This could in effect signify an end to the traditional monthly payslips, because employers would stop in a position to inform you, the employee about how much tax you have paid monthly.

PAYE (Pay as you Earn) will depend on tax codes that reflect each taxpayer’s annual salary. However according to some accountants they believe the tax system is not recognising a realistic look at modern working life, where people often have career moves and benefits frequently change.

To ensure more efficient PAYE practices, treasury ministers have advised that employers should provide HMRC with updates every month concerning employees's pay and other financial details. Now is that really fair?

This new founded insight into employees information could provide the basis for a new "centralised deductions" system. Consequently this would allow HMRC an exclusive role look into your monthly pay packets.

Simply speaking instead of you receiving your monthly wage, payslip and all under the deductions system, employers would pay your monthly salary directly into an HMRC run central calculator. Automatic income tax deductions would then be processed with the remainder being passed onto you by HMRC. On top of that you would only be capable of discover how much income tax paid by asking HMRC.

This has obviously raised several alarm bells amongst folks who suffer from voiced their opinion on the subject. Brian Stenhouse from Armstrong Watson, a company that runs payroll services for over 2,000 companies declared people should have "deep concerns" regarding the central deductions scheme.

Employee financial difficulties and mortgage defaults are also expected to increase in the new year with the new standard rate of tax at 20% on all purchased products. During the recession, the UK has seen a 400% increase in workers seeking emergency short term loans or payday loans and the figures show no signs of slowing.

He further added, "Are people gonna be happy to give HMRC their bank details and trust HMRC to make the right deductions and pass on their salary every month? Given they’re not going undertake a complete monthly payslip any more, people will probably be in dark about what’s been deducted. And when there is an error, they’d be reliant on HMRC to correct it."

Treasury insiders believe ministers had made no decision yet on revamping the PAYE system, but insisted the coalition government is determined to provide a more accurate system.

Another source added, "Labour left the tax system in a mess and we are determined to clean it up." Looks like this is set to rumble on for a while longer.

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