Budget? What budget?

Although we are being promised an eye catching budget on 11th March, Sajid Javid and his fellow conservatives appear to have not factored practicalities into their master plans. Announcements will have an impact on payroll; changes take time to implement and with the new tax year only 3 weeks after the budget, payroll software suppliers and service providers will have minimal time to plan and undertake the work require to meet the new changes.

Programming, testing and roll out of system updates will take weeks at best, which eats into valuable time required to prepare client payrolls for the new tax year, signing off the previous year and issuing P60s to employees.

I fully appreciate RTI has made year end considerably more manageable for us payroll people, but at HWB we do not charge for this annual process which means good planning is essential to ensure April payrolls are not affected.

The delay in the budget, due to Brexit and the General Election, will inevitably have a knock on effect for businesses but it feels the practicalities of it being so late has been ignored or downplayed.

Part of me is hoping for some big shakeup of the tax system to warrant the delay, but the realist in me is expecting simply an update on National Insurance thresholds and confirmation of the personal allowance being maintained at ï¿¡12,500, as previously announced.

Let’s wait and see….