This release includes the statutory payroll changes for the 2020-21 year-end and the new 2021-22 tax year.
Product Versions That Are Affected:
There is no upgrade to Online Filing Manager this year. Users should continue to use Online Filing Manager (4.01.00) to send RTI submissions to HMRC.
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The age threshold for the National Living Wage (NLW) will reduce from its current level of 25 years of age, to 23 from April 2021. Opera’s NLW system table has therefore been updated for this age reduction. This age reduction has also been reflected in Opera’s Payroll calculation and reporting functions.
Scotland will be raising their student loan earnings threshold to £25,000 from April 2021. This threshold will be for new and existing borrowers and the repayment period has also been reduced to 30 years, previously 35 years which will bring it in line with England and Wales. As a result of this increase, a new Scottish student loan plan, type 4 has been introduced.
For the 2020-21 tax year, HMRC are no longer providing pre-printed P60 stationery. Therefore, the option to print to HMRC stationery has been removed. The report can now be printed to plain paper in either colour or monochrome format and uses the approved HMRC substitute P60 design.
The P60 design itself has been updated for the 2020-21 tax year and includes the new statutory Parental Bereavement Pay box and new text has also been added to the Certificate by Employer/Paying Office section.
The Fuel Type field in the Car and Car Fuel section in the Benefits form has been uplifted to display all the available fuel types for P11D benefits for the 2020/21 tax year. The options available include:
Opera’s RTI file formats have been updated to comply with HMRC specific ‘tax year related fields’ in the file format of the FPS and EPS XML files for the 2021/22 tax year.
Two new reports (Standard & Excel variants) have been added to this release to handle the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) from February 2021 to April 2021. Both reports are available from the Payroll, EOY/Special Reports – Advanced Pay/Ded List report.
Off-payroll working was to be introduced in April 2020 but was subsequently delayed until April 2021. The relevant updates were however introduced in last year’s payroll update. Listed below is a reminder of the rules associated with off-payroll working in the private sector.
The rules can apply if a worker provides their services through an intermediary. An intermediary will usually be the worker’s own personal service company (PSC). They could also be a partnership, a managed service company, or an individual.
The rule change ensures that such workers who work in the private sector for medium and large sized organisations, and who would have been an employee if they were providing their services directly to the client, pay broadly the same income tax and National Insurance contributions as employees. These rules are sometimes known as ‘IR35’. The rule already applies within the public sector.
The ‘fee-payer’ (e.g. the private sector client whom the off-payroll worker is working for) will have to deduct income tax and NI contributions from the payment that is due to be paid to the worker. The income tax and NI will then be paid over to HMRC as per other employees. The amount the off-payroll worker is paid will be reduced by the employee’s income tax and NI contributions as deducted by the fee-payer.
The release will include the usual adjustments to tax and NI bands/rates, statutory payment amounts, auto-enrolment thresholds, etc. If any further changes are required, we will issue the necessary update of which you will be able to download and make available to your customers.
PWX (2.20.10) is compliant with Opera 3 (2.81.00) and reflects all the payroll information for Payroll Self Service and Timesheet processing. In addition,
the encryption algorithm which controls the communication between the Pegasus Web Xchange website and the Mobile Sales application has also been updated to enhance the security protection and protocols used within PWX. Therefore, users of Mobile Sales will need to upgrade to Mobile Sales (1.00.05) to take advantage of the enhanced security protection.
To download the latest version of the Mobile Sales application please visit The Google Play Store
This release also includes some general maintenance.
Note: All Updated Release Notes Provided by Pegasus.