employing a nanny – Page 3

Query on P60

After nanny is issued with her P60, she may look at it and query some of the details.

One common question from both nanny and the employer is that the total gross pay is too low. The gross pay is for the previous tax year only, not the whole of the employment and may also include earnings from a previous employer if nanny started part way through that tax year.

Another query regarding the pay is that it is too high. If nanny is paid a net salary say £1000 a month, they would expect the pay to say £12,000. However, that is the net salary, the tax, employee national insurance, employee pension costs and student loans are on top of this and then added to the net to give the gross salary.

HMRC Payment Deadlines

In order to avoid penalties and interest, it is important to make sure you pay HMRC on time for tax, employee and employer national insurance and student loan deductions.

Here is a note of each quarter’s payment and payment deadlines:

Quarter Period for Payment Date

Quarter 1 6^th April to 5^thJuly 22^nd July

Quarter 2 6^th July to 5^th October 22^nd October

Quarter 3 6^th October to 5^th January 22^nd January

Quarter 4 6^th January to 5^th April 22^nd April

If your PAYE exceeds over £1,500 a month, you will have to pay HMRC monthly instead of quarterly.

The best way to pay them is directly via their website, you will get a confirmation email from them stating all the transaction details in case there was ever a dispute of payments- https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/pay-online/epaye

Nannies and your Company

I have my own company; can I pay nanny through my payroll?

No. Nannies are considered a personal employee and should not be under a company’s PAYE. Nannies should not be paid through your company, but through your own personal bank account.

Therefor you need to register yourself as an employer of a nanny and register nanny through this new company and process and submit payroll through this new company.

You can either do this yourself through HMRC or contact us at payrollfornannies.co.uk and we will then hopefully take the responsibility of doing this on your behalf

Employment Allowance

HMRC allow most employers to get £3,000 off their National Insurance liability.

Unfortunately, if you employ someone for personal, household or domestic work you are unable to claim this as the employees are being employed in a personal capacity to support the running of a household.

It is important to know the rules otherwise you could end up paying back this money to HMRC.

You can claim on the following:

old age

mental or physical disability

past or present dependence on alcohol or drugs

past or present illness

past or present mental disorder

You cannot claim the Employment Allowance if you are employing a nanny unless the nanny is employed for an individual who needs care because of one of the reasons set out above.

To claim for the Employment Allowance, it will need to be submitted via payroll software by means of sending an EPS (Employment Payment Summary).

Zero-Hours contracts

‘Zero hours contract’ is a non-legal term used to describe many different types of casual agreements between an employer and an individual.

Generally speaking, a zero hours contract is one in which the employer does not guarantee the individual any hours of work. The employer offers the individual work when it arises, and the individual can either accept the work offered, or decide not to take up the offer of work on that occasion.

Regardless of how many hours are offered, the employer must pay at least the National Minimum Wage.

Everyone employed on a zero hours contract is entitled to statutory employment rights. There are no exceptions.

A person will benefit from the employment rights associated with their employment status and individuals on a zero hours contract will either have the employment status of a ’worker’ or an ‘employee’.

Any individual on a zero hours contract who is a ‘worker’ will be entitled to at least the National Minimum Wage, paid annual leave, rest breaks and protection from discrimination.

Unpaid Parental Leave

Eligible employees can take unpaid parental leave to look after their child’s welfare, for example,

spend more time with their children

look at new schools

settle children into new childcare arrangements

spend more time with family, such as visiting grandparents

Their employment rights are protected during parental leave.

Parental leave is unpaid. Employees are entitled to 18 weeks leave for each child and adopted child, up to their 18^th birthday.

The limit on how much parental leave each parent can take in a year is 4 weeks for each child (unless the employer agrees otherwise).

You must take parental leave as whole weeks (eg 1 week or 2 weeks) rather than individual days, unless your employer agrees otherwise or if your child is disabled. You don’t have to take all the leave at once.

Employees qualify if all of these apply:

they’ve been in the company for more than a year

they’re named on the child’s birth or adoption certificate or they have or expect to have parental responsibility

Employees must give 21 days’ notice before their intended start date. If they or their partner are having a baby or adopting, it’s 21 days before the week the baby or child is expected.

Employees must confirm the start and end dates in their notice. Unless an employer requests it, this doesn’t have to be in writing.

Discrimination

It is against the law to treat someone less favourably than someone else because of a personal characteristic such as religion, sex, gender reassignment or age.

Discrimination can include:

not hiring someone
selecting a particular person for redundancy
paying someone less than another worker without good reason

You can discriminate against someone even if you do not intend to. For example, you can discriminate indirectly by offering working conditions or rules that disadvantage one group of people more than another.

Discrimination in Job adverts

You must not state or imply in a job advert that you’ll discriminate against anyone. This includes saying that you are not able to cater for workers with a disability.

Only use phrases like ‘recent graduate’ or ‘highly experienced’ when these are actual requirements of the job. Otherwise you could discriminate against younger or older people who might not have had the opportunity to get qualifications.

Where you advertise might cause indirect discrimination – for example, advertising only in men’s magazines.

Nanny and Additional Employment

When nanny gets an additional job whilst still in your employ, it is her responsibility to make sure her tax codes in each employment are correct.

As an employer, you could always notify her of her tax situation in your employment and what should happen in her 2^nd job. This way you have mitigated any risk of an under payment for nanny and potentially your costs increasing if you have agreed a net wage.

If you are nanny’s main job and have the tax code 1250L for her, if she gets another job, Basic Rate tax (BR) must be applied in her other job. This can be indicated by nanny completing a starter checklist and ticking statement C –

https://public-online.hmrc.gov.uk/lc/content/xfaforms/profiles/forms.html?contentRoot=repository:///Applications/PersonalTax_iForms/1.0/SC&template=SC.xdp

Bank Holidays

Bank Holidays 2020 2020 is upon us and it is always handy to have a list of the bank holidays for the year and what day of the week they fall on. These are the dates of the bank holidays in 2020 for England.
1 January	Wednesday	New Year’s Day
10 April	Friday	Good Friday
13 April	Monday	Easter Monday
8 May	Friday	Early May Bank Holiday
25 May	Monday	Spring bank holiday
31 August	Monday	Summer bank holiday
25 December	Friday	Christmas Day
28 December	Monday	Boxing Day

If a bank holiday is on a weekend, a ‘substitute’ weekday becomes a bank holiday, normally the following Monday.

It is worth noting that if nanny does not work 5 days a week that she is still entitled to bank holidays on a pro rata basis, for example if nanny only works 3 days per week then she is still entitled to 3/5ths of the 8 bank holidays whether her working day falls on a bank holiday or not.

Tax Year End Adjustments

As the end of the tax year approaches, are nanny’s payslips correct?

It is important to make sure that what is being submitted to HMRC is correct, and the P60 we will shortly produce is right.

Has nanny had a pay change that is not reflected on the payslip?

Have you given nanny a bonus recently?

Has nanny recently changed address or changed her name?

Always check nanny’s payslips as her tax code may have changed causing her net pay to differ