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Small Business News
1 in 9 small employers risk making errors in staff wages
In a survey carried out by GfK NOP for Her Majestys Revenue and Customs, 11 percent of small employers said they still use manual tables to calculate the tax and NI on their staff wages, despite computerised tools being freely available Using the manual tables entails, every pay day, looking up figures in
several tables and then combining the numbers using simple arithmetic. For
a typical employee, this involves looking up numbers in at least 3 tables and carrying out 8 arithmetic steps. The tables, complete with instructions, can be downloaded from HMRC’s website or ordered by telephone from the HMRC Employer Orderline.
There are many computerised tools available to make calculation of tax and NI simpler. These include commercial payroll packages, web based services and free tools on HMRC’s website.
The Payroll Site is one web based service designed to make payroll calculations simpler. Managing Director, Steven Tucker, said "I'm amazed that anyone has the patience to use the manual tables for anything other than a one-off check. I tried this when I first operated PAYE a decade or so ago and I found it time consuming and error prone – and I’m a maths graduate.". He added “That’s why we first launched our website: to make life easier for small employers, so they can just click a couple of buttons, print their payslips and get on with running their business.”.
When the employers using the manual tables were asked their key reasons, just 1% said it was because it was more accurate. 46% said it was because they were already used to this method, and 25% said they had always used the manual tables. A surprising 37% said it was because they found this method easy, 11% said it saved time and 1% said it was more cost-effective than other methods. Some employers gave more than one reason.
GfK NOP interviewed 1,502 registered employers with fewer than 100 employees. The interviews were carried out by telephone between July 7 and August 8, 2008 and the results were made public in April 2009.
by: Editor
20th Apr 2009
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