Employment Tax Services

Overview

Deloitte’s employment tax practice provides access to a national network of specialists who provide assistance, insight and advice on all aspects of employment tax compliance. We work with our clients to ensure that compliance obligations are met, uncertain tax positions are resolved and that cost efficient processes and procedures are implemented and maintained using our extensive experience and innovative technology solutions.

You can find more detail about some of our services below. Links to our recent webinars and other material can be found here.

Payroll and employment tax reporting

The importance of getting payroll and employment tax returns (RTI, Forms P11D, PAYE Settlement Agreements, CIS, Form 42 etc) right has never been greater with increased focus by HMRC and a complex penalty and interest regime for those who do not get filings right and on time.

Deloitte’s national network of employment tax specialists, coupled with our market leading technology solutions, are well placed to help employers meet their compliance obligations and to maximise cost control. We also use our extensive experience to help employers to implement appropriate controls to balance cost efficiency with compliance assurance where payroll and reporting obligations are outsourced.

Key contact: Michael Nicolaides

Global employment tax compliance

Multi-national organisations are increasingly globalising, outsourcing and offshoring core functions such as payroll, HR and finance. Whilst there are many benefits of doing this it can lead to challenges for employers in meeting their employment taxes compliance as follows:

• Complex processes are often overly simplified in a shared service centre environment, leading to compliance exposures and risk;
• The outsourcing and globalising of local country processes (such as payroll) can lead to a gap in skills and knowledge to manage off-cycle and non-standard items locally, to identify and escalate potential risk issues and to manage the impact of business change; and
• The geographical distance from the business (where core processes are off or near-shored) can mean that the compliance processing function is disconnected from the business, and consequently oversight and visibility are lost.

We recognise and respond to these challenges, bringing together a globally coordinated network of specialists and market leading technology to enable the effective management of employment taxes in all jurisdictions.

Key contact: John Lewis

Fair pay

We have significant experience of advising clients across a broad range of fair pay matters, including the following:

• National Minimum Wage (“NMW”);
• Holiday Pay and Holiday entitlement;
• Equal Pay;
• Gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting, disability reporting and broader Diversity and Inclusion advisory services;
• CEO ratios;
• Automatic enrolment; and
• Other worker rights matters such as contractor status.

Key contact: Helen Kaye

Off payroll working

Off payroll working is an area of complexity for many organisations, particularly given the recent changes to the ‘IR35’ rules in the private sector. We support organisations who are:

• End client users of off-payroll workers who removed Personal Service Companies (PSCs) from their supply chain and transitioned to alternative agency worker or employment company alternatives;
• End clients who continue to use PSCs and therefore must comply with the IR35 rules;
• End clients who engage self-employed individuals directly; and
• Intermediaries within the supply chain.

Key contact: Rich Barrett

Employment tax: digital solutions

We offer a range of digital solutions to support with the management of many employment taxes risks. The solutions include:

• PSA Wizard: a digital approach to preparing your PSA. Learn more
• Tax termination tool: a web based tool to assist in determining the correct income tax and NIC treatment of termination payments. Learn more
• A range of technology solutions to support with the complexities of engaging off-payroll workers
• Digital solutions to navigating global employment taxes leadership

Key contact: James Warwick

Employment tax governance; including Senior Accounting Officer (SAO) obligations and Tax Strategy Disclosure requirements

The Senior Accounting Officer (SAO) regime, which applies to the largest companies in the UK, places an additional compliance obligation on employers. Additionally, many businesses are now required to disclose their tax strategy on the internet, and as a result are focused on maintaining appropriate governance and controls to stand behind that strategy. These requirements present specific challenges from an employment tax perspective due to the number of different returns and need for interaction between a wide range of stakeholders including payroll, HR, reward, tax and finance.

We work with many of the UK’s largest businesses to assess their current level of compliance, work on the implementation of appropriate tax accounting arrangements where required and support with ongoing testing to maintain the arrangements. Our experience of working with the largest employers as well as our established methodology and interaction with HMRC enables us to benchmark current arrangements and to provide constructive input.

We tailor our support to the needs of each business, providing both employment tax-focused solutions as well as broader holistic tax input working as part of a cross-tax team.

Key contact: Michael Nicolaides

Car and mobility consulting

The provision of company cars and/or car allowances is often one of the largest costs faced by employers as well as being a central part of the employee reward package. In our experience the complexity of the decision making process is often underestimated and the options available to create efficiencies are not always fully understood.

This is an area of focus for many organisations at the moment as they determine the ways in which they can progress towards net zero, with those responsible for company cars and employee mobility more broadly considering the role they can play.

The Deloitte Car Consulting team is a team of dedicated car specialists with considerable experience of working with employers in both the private and public sector using our market leading technology solutions to assess, model and help design and implement efficient fleet, fuel and car allowance solutions.

Key Contact: James Warwick

Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)

There is an increased focus by HMRC on compliance in relation to CIS matters both for businesses in the private and public sector as well as Companies coming into the UK from overseas who are entering into contracts for construction operations. The rules around the requirements to be registered and the registration process itself can be complex and failure to operate the scheme correctly can result in significant penalties. Deloitte’s national network of CIS specialists advise on a range of CIS issues including:

• Assessing initial registration obligations;
• Advising on deregistration options for non construction businesses;
• Reviewing and helping to implement CIS procedures; and
• Help with payment status challenges from HMRC.

Deloitte also offers an outsourced CIS compliance service, for those looking for an alternative solution for their monthly verification and return filing requirements.

Key Contact: Michael Nicolaides

Pensions

The Employment Tax Pensions team is part of the wider Employment Tax practice and advises corporate, trustee and individual clients on domestic and international pension and life assurance matters.

We provide tax/social security, recommended practice, governance and strategic advice to employers operating retirement and death benefit plans for UK and overseas based populations. We also advise individuals and trustees in relation to cross-border retirement positions covering UK and non-UK taxes and social security. Examples of recent projects include:

• Tax (including PAYE) risk and governance review for a large company of their multiple international pension plans for senior employees working in the UK.
• UK income tax, social security, tax withholding and reporting advice (inc. UK payroll and tax return filing support), in respect of employees remaining in their home country pension plans whilst on assignment in the UK.
• Advising a high net worth individual approaching retirement on their options for withdrawing funds from their UK & offshore pension plans.
• Assisting in implementing an Excepted Group Life Policy to provide death in service benefits to UK employees who would otherwise be subject to the Lifetime Allowance limit (inc. roll out of employee comms).

Key contact: Chris Bulleyment