“Screen time is bad for your children!” It seems as though that’s all we’re hearing in the news lately. Whilst research is still being conducted into the full effects of screen-time on young children, here are 5 alternatives for when you and your child need a little quiet time instead of turning to the TV, tablet or games console.
Our partners at www.PayrollForNannies.co.uk provide payroll advice for parents and nannies and have provided this content. For more advice and support please get in touch with them.
It is important to make sure you take proper steps to make sure nanny can be employed legally in the UK. If you do not you could face a £20,000 penalty or worst case scenario a 2 year prison sentence!
You must take a photocopy for identity check of a passport, birth certificate or national ID card. We would always recommend you see an original version before taking a copy.
An EEA (European Economic Area), employers must check their right to work documents, take a photocopy, and make sure they are from the EEA country.
For a more detailed guide:
Our partners at www.PayrollForNannies.co.uk provide payroll advice for parents and nannies and have provided this content. For more advice and support please get in touch with them.
In order to qualify for small employer relief, your liability for national insurance for the last complete tax year needs to be £45,000 or less.
An employer hiring a nanny will often meet the criteria of small employer relief.
This means that for statutory payments such as maternity pay, paternity pay, shared parental pay and adoption pay, you can reclaim 100% of these payments plus an additional 3% to help towards the cost of your employers NI.
It is important that this is noted in the payroll software, so if you ever have statutory payments, they will get deducted off your tax and national insurance liability each quarter.
Employers with a liability of more than £45,000.00 in last complete tax year can only claim back 92% of the above statutory payments.
Our partners at www.PayrollForNannies.co.uk provide payroll advice for parents and nannies and have provided this content. For more advice and support please get in touch with them.
Benefits in kind are benefits which both Employers and Employees can receive from their employment, which are not included in their salary.
As an employee, you pay tax on company benefits. The amount of tax you pay, depends on what kind of benefits you get and their value and it is the employer who deducts the amounts from the employee’s gross earnings. However, some company benefits, are tax free.
Most common benefits in Kind for nannies are listed below:
Private Car Mileage / Fuel Allowance
– Is not a taxable benefit if the employee is using the car during working hours. If they are using the car to get to and from work and outside their normal working hours, then this would be classed as a benefit in kind. If nanny is using their own car whilst they are at work, up to 0.45p per mile is tax free. Anything above this amount would be classed as a benefit and kind and will need to be reported to HMRC.
Private Medical Insurance
Subscriptions and Professional Fees
Living Accommodation
If you are providing living accommodation where the nanny has separate living quarters to the employer, this is classed as a benefit in kind, along with any bills and furniture you provide
Beneficial loans – Interest free or low interest
Flights – which do not include family holidays if you are taking the nanny with you
Any declarations for Benefits in Kind need to be submitted to HMRC via for P11(D) by 6th July each year. As an employer, there will be Class 1A National Insurance of 13.8% on the taxable benefit.
For more help and advice on this or any other payroll related matter please contact our recommended partners Payroll for Nannies https://www.payrollfornannies.co.uk/
Our partners at www.PayrollForNannies.co.uk provide payroll advice for parents and nannies and have provided this content. For more advice and support please get in touch with them.
In our review of Rishi Sunak’s Winter Economy Plan https://src-time.co.uk/government-announces-further-covid-19-support/, we referred to the Job Retention Bonus (JRB) which was announced earlier this year to sit alongside the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), although it does not actually form part of it. The Chancellor has decided that when the new Job Support Scheme (JSS) commences on 1 November, it will be possible to claim both it and the JRB.
Background
The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the scheme in July 2020 as an incentive for employers to retain staff in respect of whom they were receiving CJRS payments, after the CJRS scheme had ended.
The scheme comprises a one-off payment to employers of £1,000 in respect of every eligible employee for whom the employer has made a valid claim under the CJRS and who remains continuously employed through to 31 January 2021.
The JRB payment will be subject to corporation tax or income tax, so the business must include the whole amount as income when calculating its taxable profits.
Employers will be able to claim the JRB through gov.uk after they have filed their RTI returns for January. Payments will be made to employers from February 2021 by direct bank transfer
Qualifying employers
All types of employers are eligible for the scheme including recruitment agencies and umbrella companies, as well as those private households operating a PAYE scheme in respect of domestic staff. The employer must:
Employee eligibility
Each employee must have been:
Claims may be made for employees who are office holders, company directors and agency workers, including those employed by umbrella companies. These criteria must be met regardless of the frequency of the employee’s pay periods, their hours worked or rate of pay.
Employees who have returned from statutory parental leave or who are military reservists returning to work after 10 June 2020, for whom a CJRS claim has been made, all qualify provided the other eligibility criteria are met, as do employees who are on fixed term contracts.
Note that the employee must not be serving a contractual or statutory notice period, that started before 1 February 2021.
This article examines some of the challenges facing parents in the twenty first century and suggests ways in which we can steer a middle ground, providing our children with a loving upbringing while making time for ourselves as well.
Parents under pressure
The byword these days is “pressure”: pressure to be a top parent, pressure to have your children do well at everything. Parents who can afford to do so attend baby yoga and music classes with their newborns. Primary school children attend extra tutorial classes to have the edge on their classmates or simply because working parents cannot spare the time to give the extra help needed.
Parents matter too
And while it is a good thing that there are more activities for children from babyhood upwards, it also puts parents under pressure to have their children do as much as everyone else’s. The Irish writer Adam Brophy makes an interesting point in a newspaper article entitled “It’s not just about the kids, we matter too”, when he says: “When did we come to the conclusion that the development of our children’s skill set was the be-all of our existence? What message does it send to drive them from one class or training session to another when all we can manage is to spark the car’s ignition?” It’s not a point of view that we hear voiced very often but doesn’t it strike a chord with many of us?
Previous generations didn’t do as much worrying about their children’s academic or sporting achievements. People didn’t have as much disposal income as parents today and moreover, children weren’t given as much importance as they are now. Twenty-first century parents would find it difficult to envisage a world where children were expected to be “seen and not heard”. Needless to say that particular perspective on raising children isn’t one we’re advocating, however, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that as we have become better off as a society, we are giving a lot more to our children, both in emotional and material terms and often feeling under greater pressure as a result.
The extreme focus on early childhood
A recent conference at the University of Kent examined what organisers called “the extreme focus on early childhood”. Academics argued that parents of babies and toddlers, mothers in particular, are subject to ridiculous levels of pressures to “get things right” which leads to “unwarranted anxieties and guild”. Led by John Bruer, author of The Myth of the First Three Years, they said claims of the importance of parental connection in the early years have been hyped and that social policy focusing on the parent-child bond is “a waste of resources”. Parents, and especially mothers, will more than likely welcome the fact that they need not feel guilty about having to leave their child in the care of someone else while they work; nor will they “fail” to give their child a head start if they don’t sign up for various baby and toddler classes.
UNICEF study
When a recent UNICEF study found that British parents tended to overload their children with material goods to make up for not spending enough time with them, the journalist and broadcaster Mariella Fostrupp wrote in The Observer: “No offence to Unicef but a UK riddled with shopaholic parents trying to assuage their consciences with expensive toys for their unloved children is one I don’t recognise. Most people I see are struggling to pay their utility bills let alone splash out on Xboxes. The vast majority are simply battling to make ends meet”. And she rubbished the notion that our consumer culture was to blame for parents’ neglect of their children in this way: “Our entire financial system is built on our ability to work and consume to keep the economy afloat. And now we’re in the wrong for buying the odd toy for our kids?”
A good enough parent
To conclude, parents can only do their best. And to borrow the paediatrician Donald Winnicott’s phrase, being a “good enough” parent really is “good enough”. Rather than placing undue pressure on ourselves – and our children – to “get it right”, we can be good parents by spending time with them and allowing them room to develop their own interests. And by the same token we need to allow time for ourselves – as individuals and as partners in a relationship. That’s a topic for another day!
Our partners at www.PayrollForNannies.co.uk provide payroll advice for parents and nannies and have provided this content. For more advice and support please get in touch with them.
In an unprecedented move, the government has cancelled the Autumn Budget which had been tipped to include substantial tax increases for the affluent in favour of announcing a raft of measures to support jobs this winter in the wake of a double blow from COVID-19 and Brexit.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced today his Winter Economy Plan, which seems to have been inspired by similar programs in other European countries.
The current Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) will be replaced with a new Job Support Scheme (JSS)
The JSS is intended to ‘directly support’ wages of staff working at least a third of their regular hours after the CJRS scheme ends as planned at the end of October. It will start in November 2020 and end in April 2021.
Employers will pay their staff normally for hours they work. Then, they will be paid two-thirds of their pay for the remaining hours (with the employer and the government paying one-third each). So people will still see lower take-home pay – we have prepared the table below.
Normal Hours | JSS Hours | Take home percentage of contracted hours | |||
33% | 67% | 77% | |||
35% | 65% | 78% | |||
40% | 60% | 80% | |||
45% | 55% | 81% | |||
50% | 50% | 83% | |||
55% | 45% | 85% | |||
60% | 40% | 86% | |||
65% | 35% | 88% | |||
70% | 30% | 90% | |||
75% | 25% | 92% | |||
80% | 20% | 93% | |||
85% | 15% | 95% | |||
90% | 10% | 97% | |||
95% | 5% | 98% | |||
The level of grant will be calculated based on employee’s usual salary, capped at £697.92 per month. The employer will be reimbursed in arrears for the government contribution. The relevant employee(s) must not be on a redundancy notice.
The JSS is intended to protect viable jobs over next six months after the furlough scheme ends in October.
All small and medium-sized firms with a UK PAYE scheme and UK bank account are eligible – but large firms are only eligible if their turnover has fallen in the pandemic and can document this.. The JSS is open to firms who have not used CJRS.
It is designed to sit alongside the Jobs Retention Bonus and businesses can benefit from both schemes in order to help protect jobs.
The Job Retention Bonus is a one-off payment to employers of £1,000 for every employee who they previously claimed for under the scheme, and who remains continuously employed through to 31 January 2021. Eligible employees must earn at least £520 a month on average between the 1 November 2020 and 31 January 2021. Employers will be able to claim the Job Retention Bonus after they have filed PAYE for January and payments will be made to employers from February 2021.
A full time nanny is entitled to 28 days holiday (5.6 weeks) which includes bank holidays. Employers are entitled to choose all the dates of holiday nanny should take, but in practice nanny normally chooses 2 weeks while the employer chooses the other 2 weeks.
In your contract with nanny, make sure you ask for notice for nanny’s proposed holiday this will allow you to find alternative childcare. Some employers ask for at least 4 weeks notice.
We would recommend you keep note of holiday taken paid or unpaid, just in case nanny leaves part way through the year and has over taken on holiday. This way any unpaid or over paid holiday can be paid/deducted in her final payslip.
If nanny works more than 5 days a week, their holiday entitlement is capped at 28 days. It is not a problem if you agree more day’s holiday with nanny – this could be a condition of her working for over a stated amount of time.
If nanny is part time, she is entitled to annual leave (28 days including bank holidays), but pro-rated. So if nanny works 2 days a week, her holiday allowance is calculated:
2 days a week x 5.6 annual holiday allowance = 11.20 days holiday.
You must not round the holiday allowance down to 11, but can round it up to 11.5 days.
If nanny works different hours each week, you calculate her holiday pay by averaging her last 12 weeks worked hours then multiply it by 5.6, this then gives you her holiday entitlement in hours for the year and when she has a day’s holiday or was due to work on a public holiday, whatever hours she was scheduled to work that day are then deducted from her overall annual entitlement.
For more advice and support on this or any other payroll related matter please contact our recommended partners Payroll for Nannies https://www.payrollfornannies.co.uk/
Nothing upsets an established routine as much as the arrival of September. Whether it’s new activities, nursery runs, schools runs or just the end of everyone running on summer holiday time, September is often a shock to the system. The key to getting past this is planning ahead and trying to shift everyone gently onto the new time by doing a couple of practice runs. Before nannies do this they need to check it out with the parents – after all, there’s still a weekend to go and your employers might appreciate a bit of warning about the early start.
The morning starts before you’ve even gone to sleep. Late bedtimes have a huge knock on effect, and late bedtimes can be caused by late dinner, caused by a big day out which started late because you didn’t get out the house before 10…..and so on. By looking ahead to the last few days before you actually need to get up and out by 8.30 you can avoid a late night and give yourself a better chance of being on time in the morning. If, in September, it’s dinner at 5.30 and bed by 7 that needs to start around now, especially if you’re moving from dinner at 7 and bed at 8.30! Again a nanny needs to move carefully because the summer evenings are a great opportunity for parents to eat with their children and spend some time with them after they come home from work so open communication is important.
An earlier bedtime should lead to getting up earlier in the morning but you might need to encourage your new morning routine along by getting everyone up that bit earlier too. And once they’re up follow your new routine step-by-step and try to time it. That’s not to say you can no longer do complicated holiday breakfasts, of course you can but just be aware of the difference in time between preparing and eating bacon and eggs and preparing and eating a bowl of porridge.
Now is also the time to experiment with time-saving ideas for the morning. How much of tomorrow’s picnic lunch can you prepare while you cook dinner? Can you cut up some fruit ready for breakfast too? Even if you used to do that in July, chances are you’re out of the habit now and a new morning routine is as much about you as the children!
Other simple time-saving tricks include laying out clothes and bags the night before so you don’t have to run around in the morning and restocking the nappy bag when you come in rather than just before you need to go out.
“Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today” is definitely a maxim to live by.
Finally don’t underestimate the impact of a new route in the morning. Walk, catch the bus or train, or drive if that’s that you’ll be doing, at least once beforehand, especially if it’s a new or unfamiliar area. Make it into a fun game by creating a special bingo or I-spy game for older children. If you’re starting new baby activities check out the location, and parking nearby if you need to, so you don’t turn up late for the first session.
If you have any more great tips for setting up a new morning routine then let us know!
A one-off payment of £1,000 will be made to UK employers for every furloughed employee who remains continuously employed through to the end of January 2021. Employees must earn above the Lower Earnings Limit (£520 per month) on average between the end of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme at the end of October 2020 and the end of January 2021. Payments will be made from February 2021.
This bonus will be available to any employer who has furloughed an employee, even if just for the minimum three week period.
For more advice and support about Coronavirus and how it might affect employment or any other pay related issues please get in touch.
