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Key Dates

VAT Rule Breakers Targeted

Announcing the initiative on 20 May, Mike Wells, HMRC's director of risk and intelligence, said: “Our aim is to get as much input as possible into our future campaigns so that the views and experience of people and organisations outside the department play a fuller part in what we design for customers.”

Previous HMRC campaigns have targeted offshore investments, medical professionals and people working in the plumbing industry.

The department says its campaigns focus on areas where it has identified significant underpayment and that they provide straightforward opportunities for customers to put their records in order on the best possible terms, followed by swift action targeting those who choose not to take up those opportunities.

HMRC says it has raised over £500 million from voluntary disclosures and a further £100 million so far from follow-up activity.

Meanwhile, the first of a series of new HMRC task forces to tackle tax dodgers will focus on the restaurant trade, targeting businesses in London over the coming weeks.

The specialist teams will carry out concentrated compliance activity in specific high risk trade sectors and locations across the UK. The restaurant trade in Scotland and the North West will be the next areas targeted.

HMRC is planning a further nine task forces in 2011/12, with more to follow in 2012/13.

LINK: Introduction to VAT

LINK: Reporting tax evasion

Cheque guarentee card scheme closes

Under the scheme, a bank will currently pay a guaranteed cheque (one given to the recipient with a debit or credit card showing a cheque guarantee hologram for £50, £100 or £250 and where the recipient also copies the card number onto the back of the cheque), even if there is not enough cash in the account on which the cheque is drawn.

The last time a cheque can be accepted under this scheme will be when it is written on and dated 30 June 2011.

The Payments Council says that around one-third of guaranteed cheques are used in shops, one-sixth for bill payments and the remainder for a wide variety of purposes such as paying tradesmen, for leisure activities, for professional services, delivered items (e.g. milk), holidays and hotels.

But despite the axing of the guaranteed cheque scheme, the Payments Council says very little will change, adding: 'As now, any business can decide it is prepared to accept a cheque without a guarantee: as with all types of payment, shops and businesses decide which payments they want to accept.'

It says: 'You can be certain that cheque funds are yours (and won't be returned unpaid unless you are a knowing party to a fraud) at the end of the sixth working day after you've paid in a cheque: so this is the point when it's safe to release goods or services.'

Banks and building societies that provide cheque guarantee services have been working to advise businesses and individuals who use the system of the closure date and to provide details of alternative forms of payment. For businesses, these include debit, credit or charge cards, online banking, telephone banking and cash.

LINK: Payments Council

LINK: Timescales for cheque clearing

TUPE rules included in employment law review

'We will be looking carefully at the arguments for reform. Fairness for individuals will not be compromised – but where we can make legislation easier to understand, improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary bureaucracy we will.' The new areas to be considered for reform are:

• compensation for discrimination: with unlimited levels of compensation for cases of discrimination, the government says that employers worry that high awards may encourage people to take weak, speculative or vexatious cases in the hope of a large payout, which can lead to employers settling such cases before they reach a tribunal;
• collective redundancy rules: the government says employers are concerned that the current requirement that consultation over collective redundancy runs for a minimum period of 90 days is hindering their ability to restructure efficiently and retain a flexible workforce, with employers in financial difficulty worrying about how long they need to keep paying staff after it has become clear that they need to let them go;
• TUPE (Transfer Undertakings Protection of Employment Regulations)rules, which protect employees' terms and conditions of employment when a business is transferred from one owner to another. The government says some businesses believe that they are overly bureaucratic.

The government will start reviewing these areas this year.

LINK: Employment law review

Bribery Act takes effect on 1 July

A key element of the new Act is that it creates a new offence that can be committed by commercial organisations which fail to prevent persons associated with them from bribing another person on their behalf. The only defence will be to show 'adequate procedures' (not defined in the Act) to prevent bribery.

The Ministry of Justice guidance says many organisations, particularly those whose business is carried out primarily in the UK, will face little or no risk of bribery.

But it adds: 'If you operate overseas, the risks may be higher. Factors such as the particular country you want to do business in, the sector which you are dealing in, the value and duration of your project, the kind of business you want to do and the people you engage to do your business, will all be relevant.

'If there is very little risk of bribery being committed on behalf of your organisation then you may not feel the need for any procedures to prevent bribery. If, having assessed the position, there is a risk of bribery then, if you want to rely on the defence [of adequate procedures], the procedures you adopt should be proportionate to that risk.

'In micro-businesses it may be enough for simple oral reminders to key staff about the organisation's anti-bribery policies.'

One area of concern over the Bribery Act has been how it will affect hospitality. The Ministry of Justice guidance says: 'As a general proposition, hospitality or promotional expenditure which is proportionate and reasonable given the sort of business you do is very unlikely to engage the Act.

'So you can continue to provide tickets to sporting events, take clients to dinner, offer gifts to clients as a reflection of your good relations, or pay for reasonable travel expenses in order to demonstrate your goods or services to clients if that is reasonable and proportionate for your business.'

For specific questions or concerns relating to your business, you should always take legal advice from a solicitor.

LINK: Ministry of Justice guidance

Flexible Working Consultation Launched

• how to extend the right to flexible working to all employees
• changes to the Working Time Regulations as a result of European cases about the interaction of annual leave and sick leave
• tackling unequal pay through requiring employers who lose an employment tribunal case on equal pay to carry out a pay audit.

Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities Theresa May said: 'Britain's workplace laws are in need of modernisation. We have made great strides in addressing explicit discrimination in the workplace, but disadvantage persists.

'The solution to these challenges, though, is not more bureaucracy, top-down intervention and politically correct quotas, but policies that go with the grain of human nature and maximise flexibility and choice.

'That is why we will extend the right to request flexible working to all and introduce a new system of flexible parental leave, both of which will contribute to our commitment to closing down the gender pay gap. But where there is evidence of discrimination we will punish it, so we will introduce mandatory pay audits for companies that are found guilty of pay discrimination.'

The consultation forms part of the government's major review of employment law, which it says is designed to make it easier for businesses to employ people, grow and boost opportunities but also for people to balance work and family commitments.

John Walker, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the planned measures would create extra difficulties for employers. He said: "The government has committed to reducing the amount of red tape that small firms have to wade through in running their businesses.

'Yet it wants to introduce additional complexity and new legislation, making it even more complicated and time-consuming in the process.'

LINK: Consultation on Modern Workplaces

Health and Safety rules blocking new jobs, says report

The report, titled Health and Safety: a Risky Business? was released on 24 May. It calls for:

• regulation to be tailored to the risk level of the workplace
• streamlining and simplifying legislation to reduce costs and confusion
• a review of the UK implementation of EU Directives.

BCC director general David Frost said:'Employers are dealing with a multitude of regulations that do not necessarily add to the safety of workers. The sheer volume of rules causes confusion for employers, particularly amongst smaller firms without the resource to tackle this.

'Good health and safety legislation is crucial in high-risk environments. But time and time again, we hear of unnecessary and unreasonable examples of health and safety. For example, home workers are treated in the same way as those working onsite, with the employer forced to conduct ever-more elaborate and costly assessments of the employee's home environment.'

Employment Minister Chris Grayling announced in March that risk management specialist Professor Ragnar E Löfstedt would chair a review of all health and safety regulation, with a view to simplifying the rules and easing unnecessary burdens on business.

The findings of the review are due to be published this autumn.

LINK: BCC Press Release

LINK: Health and safety reform

First automatic pension enrolment letters go out

The regulator is providing a five-point checklist alongside with the notification letters, plus further information on its website. In due course, every employer in the UK will receive least two letters as they approach their duty date.

Bill Galvin, chief executive of the Pensions Regulator, said: 'Our message is that we urge every employer to check the approximate date they must comply. The date will vary between October 2012 and February 2016, depending on employer size.

'We are saying to the UK's 10,000 large employers with more than 250 staff to check your date now, read our guidance and use the five-point employer checklist to help prepare.

'For smaller employers, many of which will not need to automatically enrol staff until 2015 or 2016, we suggest that for now you look up your duty date. Later this year we will be publishing a range of web tools to help smaller employers to understand what they need to do to comply.'

LINK: Pension reform

New growth fun opens for business

Speaking to mark the launch of the fund on 19 May, Business Secretary Vince Cable said: 'The Business Growth Fund is ready to make substantial equity investments into ambitious mid-cap British companies who are set to create the business success stories of the coming years.'

The BGF will invest sums of between £2 million and £10 million approximately per business in return for a minimum ten per cent equity stake and a seat on the board for a BGF director. The fund will provide long-term equity investment for those growing companies which today do not have access to this source of capital.

Dr. Cable added: "Good investing requires local connections to find and assess opportunities, so for the fund to have a presence outside London – in both Birmingham and Edinburgh – is particularly heartening. British businesses must have access to the growth capital they need, wherever they are based."

LINK: Business Growth Fund