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9am lowdown: HMRC 'names and shames' minimum wage offenders

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30th Jul 2015
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Good morning, here’s your Thursday news.

HMRC 'names and shames' minimum wage offenders

The government has named and shamed 75 employers, many from the hairdressing and beauty sector, for failing to pay their workers the national minimum wage. To drive compliance HMRC has launched a campaign for voluntary behavioural change ahead of the minimum wage increasing to £6.70 in October. The campaign is an opportunity for employers to check they are paying their employees correctly and ensure any outstanding arrears are paid back to employees.

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Innocent Accountant pleads guilty

An accountant at smoothie company Innocent has pleaded guilty to fraud after overpaying fruit and veg suppliers  and asking them to repay the money into her own account, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Priya Moodley was caught after a company audit revealed the "suspicious" transactions. The ledger manager effectively increased her salary by £26,672 between 2012 and 2015 by these unlawful transactions.

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Twitter chat

From 4pm today we’ll be hosting a Twitter Q&A around the theme of ‘learning to love tax’.

We’ll be asking questions from the AccountingWEBuk twitter account. You can follow along by searching for the #PEP15 hashtag and you don’t have to have a Twitter account if you’d just like to see what’s going on.Joining us on Thursday we'll have some leading tax experts including the team from Gabelle who will be sharing their expertise and answering questions as well as some of the AccountingWEB editorial team.

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By mikefleming3028
31st Jul 2015 10:00

named and shamed

It goes without saying that I fully support  the Government`s initiative on enforcing Minimum Wage legislation, and here`s the  "but", is it just me that has a queasy feeling over the way that the majority of the cases published in HMRC`s list are for sums that in normal circumstances  would not warrant this kind of treatment. HMRC`s press release states that they have been thoroughly investigated  but I doubt that each and every one of them would have been culpable in any criminal, sense, why then this over the top treatment and more importantly can we expect the same treatment on cases investigated by HMRC where the settlement sums are greatly in excess of the majority of the sums disclosed in this recent list. Given that HMRC is under the cosh to produce more with less and have also been handed targets for a three fold increase in cases prosecuted I am left wondering were the line is now drawn and more importantly why different "sections" of HMRC seem to have a  different view/ policy on what and when to either publish or indeed prosecute. As it stands at the moment it seems to me that there  is a gung ho  attitude in some sections of HMRC based on a combination  of a  twisted moral view  and righteous indignation. I personally prefer the rule of law untainted by political influence, is it just me or does anyone else feel the same way?     

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By Lship
31st Jul 2015 11:04

Totally agree with Mike on this.

Yes Lime Tree avoiding paying 12.7k to 2 workers and Individual specialist cars avoiding paying 9k to 1 worker is a significant amount and should definitely warrant action...

but does Amore Scotland Ltd failing to pay £126.30 to 2 workers really warrant this treatment??

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