CARA Wales

The national minimum wage will increase from 1st October 2008. From this date, you will need to ensure that all staff are getting at least the new minimum wage per hour; appropriate to their age.  Below are last years rates and the new rates for this year:

National Minimum Wage rates from 1 October 2007

• Workers aged 22 and over - £5.52 per hour
• Workers aged 18-21 -         £4.60 per hour
• Workers aged 16-17 -         £3.40 per hour
• Accommodation offset -      £4.30 per day (£30.10 per week)

New National Minimum Wage rates from 1 October 2008

• Workers aged 22 and over - £5.73 per hour
• Workers aged 18-21 -         £4.77 per hour
• Workers aged 16-17 -         £3.53 per hour
• Accommodation offset -      £4.46 per day (£31.22 per week)

If you have any queries regarding payroll, please contact us and we will be happy to help.

From September 2008 tax codes for many employees are going to change. The personal allowance (free pay) in 2008/09 for people under 65 will increase from £5435 to £6035.  This means that employees are now able to earn £116 per week or £503 per month before tax and N.I. are applied.  The new emergency tax code will be 603L. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will be sending out a revised Employer CD-ROM; 2008 (August), which will include updated tools for calculating payroll.  If you use a payroll system, you should be sent an update in August.  If you have not received the update yet, contact your payroll provider. 

The new tax codes must be used from the first payday on or after 7th September 2008. The table below (taken from HMRC website) shows the changes that will need to be made to your employees’ tax codes. 

 More information can be found on HMRC website: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/epa-basicrate.htm

Taking on staff can be a daunting task. First you need to decide what to put in the advert, then you have to shortlist, interview and make the decision about who to take on. Once you have taken on a member of staff this automatically means that you have to take on certain responsibilities towards them. As well as considering health and safety and working conditions you will also be responsible for organising their wages. 

As well as making sure that your employee gets paid on time, you are also responsible for calculating their tax and national insurance contributions. You will need to manage their statutory payments such as holiday pay, sick pay, paternity/maternity pay and student loan contributions. As an employer you are expected to collect and keep certain information about your staff and liaise with the Inland Revenue at the year end to provide them with the details of your payroll throughout the year. You also need to ensure you pay the Inland Revenue the appropriate amounts at the correct times. These responsibilities do not only apply to regular full-time staff, but also to casual staff, part-time staff and seasonal workers. 

At CARA we can help take some of these responsibilities on through offering two different services: -

1.   We offer a payroll package where we will set you up on our payroll system, Earnie. Through

      Earnie we can provide your workers with professional looking payslips (see example below), hold employee information, handle employee queries and provide the Inland Revenue with

      the information they require throughout the year and more importantly at the year end. 

2.   We are also offering a new service to help with the selection of staff. As well as being able

      to advertise vacancies on our website we will take away the hassle of short listing and interviewing. We will organise advertisements in other publications, the interviews and one of our staff will be present at the interview to either lead the discussions or to act as another opinion when it comes to the decision making.

Example of the Earnie payslip

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