Staff meetings

Staff meetings

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During the last year a client has spent around £500 taking staff out to lunch - nothing lavish at £20/£30 a time at one of the local resteraunts - but usually one or two a month. He has 20 staff.

These lunches are to have off site reviews with the staff on the progress - an informal annual review - and to enable the staff to speak freely out of the confines of his office or in the meeting room in their office.

As I see it, these costs have to either go on the staff memebres p11d or they can apply for them to be covered by a PSA but I was just wondering as a) they are available to all (at various stages during the year) and b) it is for a genuine business reason to get the staff "relaxed" it might be OK. To me I think it is a benefit but I was wondering if any readers have other views before I break the good news to him.

Not sure if it helps but the client is in advertising and is based in London and this is apparantly the "norm" in this industry!

Thankyou

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By Steve Kesby
13th Dec 2011 11:19

Work-related training?

Is £500 a typo?  It doesn't seem a lot in the context of the other information, and that amount doesn't seem too great a concern.

You could try applying for a dispensation for the prospective expenditure on the basis that this is work-related training:

"a training course or other activity designed to impart, instil, improve or reinforce any knowledge, skills or personal qualities, which are likely to prove useful to the employee when performing the duties of the employment"

There is the slight issue that lunch falls into an excluded purpose, but HMRC might be prepared to accept that (in the genuine context of providing an atmosphere for appraisal) that the excluded element can be regarded as a trivial benefit.  See EIM21860 et seq.

If you can get a dispensation for the prospective expenditure, then you know how to treat the retrospective expenditure.

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Replying to Grayson Moore:
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By Ding Dong
13th Dec 2011 11:15

Thankyou Steve

Yes you are right the amount is relatively minimal and so I will look further into the use of the trivial benefits regime here. (they do already make use of that for other minor staff benefits - each staff member gets a small (£10) gift (flowers etc) on their birthday but had not considered using the same "exemption" here.

 

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