Nov 2016
29
A Christmas Bonus will be paid out to all eligible welfare and pension recipients along with their normal weekly payment during the week beginning November 28th 2016.
Anyone getting monthly payments will get any bonus due in their December payment.
An 85% 2016 Christmas Bonus for Social Welfare and Pensions was confirmed in Budget 2017 back in October. The Christmas Bonus is 85% of your normal payment (including any payments for qualified adults or children) with a minimum payment of €20.
About 1.3 million people will benefit from the Christmas Bonus (almost 890,000 recipients and an estimated 400,000 dependents). Around €225 million will be paid out. It will be useful for all the extra expenses at Christmas time.
The DSP Christmas Bonus is a non taxable payment. To keep record of it through your payroll you can add it as a non taxable addition.
Nov 2016
17
Revenue propose to roll out real time reporting of PAYE from 1st January 2019.
This means that payroll software will submit data (much akin to the annual P35) to Revenue each pay period.
The technology behind this may pose some challenges, not least for Revenue who will need to handle significant volume. Most payroll software companies will be able to adapt, assuming that file specifications, test environments etc. are provided to them in good time by Revenue.
The core issue is the possible expectation that the periodic payroll data transmission should be sent to Revenue “on or before” each pay date. This is the position in the UK where RTI (real time information) has been in place for a number of years. The “on or before” requirement has caused problems and HMRC had to relax their requirements (and penalties regime) in the initial year or so.
“On or before” represents a seismic shift for bureaus and employers alike and a much better alternative might be the submission of monthly returns. This is where the monthly P30 is enhanced to include all the P35 fields.
Automatic retrieval of P2C data would be a nice feature of PAYE modernisation and hopefully this will be included as part of the overall package.
The consultation document can be found at http://www.revenue.ie/en/spotlights/paye-modernisation.html
Submissions are invited up to 12th December 2016.
Interested in finding out more about PAYE Modernisation? Register now for our free PAYE Modernisation webinar. Click here to find out more.
