{"id":771,"date":"2019-11-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/2019\/11\/21\/when-trivial-can-be-significant\/"},"modified":"2019-11-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T00:00:00","slug":"when-trivial-can-be-significant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/2019\/11\/21\/when-trivial-can-be-significant\/","title":{"rendered":"When trivial can be significant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The following extracts from HMRC&rsquo;s website explain how certain benefits to employees can be tax-free. Surprisingly, HMRC describe these as &ldquo;trivial&rdquo; benefits.<\/p>\n<p><em>You don&rsquo;t have to pay tax on a benefit for your employee if all of the following apply:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>it cost you &pound;50 or less to provide<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>it isn&rsquo;t cash or a cash voucher<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>it isn&rsquo;t a reward for their work or performance<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>it isn&rsquo;t in the terms of their contract<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This is known as a &lsquo;trivial benefit&rsquo;. You don&rsquo;t need to pay tax or National Insurance or let HMRC know.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>You have to pay tax on any benefits that don&rsquo;t meet all these criteria.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Salary sacrifice arrangements<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>If you provide trivial benefits as part of a salary sacrifice arrangement they won&rsquo;t be exempt. You&rsquo;ll need to report on form P11D whichever amount is higher:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>the salary given up<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>how much you paid for the trivial benefits<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>These rules don&rsquo;t apply to arrangements made before 6 April 2017 &#8211; check when the rules will change.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Directors of &lsquo;close&rsquo; companies<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>You can&rsquo;t receive trivial benefits worth more than &pound;300 in a tax year if you&rsquo;re the director of a &lsquo;close&rsquo; company.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>A close company is a limited company that&rsquo;s run by 5 or fewer shareholders.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So, if you keep to HMRC&rsquo;s trivial benefit rules, these payments may help you to spread a little festive cheer this Christmas. Goodness knows, we could all do with some of that.<\/p>\n<!-- -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following extracts from HMRC&rsquo;s website explain how certain benefits to employees can be tax-free. Surprisingly, HMRC describe these as &ldquo;trivial&rdquo; benefits. You don&rsquo;t have to pay tax on a benefit for your employee if all of the following apply: it cost you &pound;50 or less to provide it isn&rsquo;t cash or a cash voucher [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","blog-left-layout","blog-style-postblock","","blog-alt-odd"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}