HMRC cracks down on minimum wage violators

Posted by Jon Wilcox PM | on Wed, 06/01/2010 - 11:30 1591 1 comment

HMRC has created a dedicated team to resolve complex and high profile National Minimum Wage cases.

HMRC’s new Dynamic Response Team will start off by prioritising cases where employers are paying migrant labourers less than the minimum wage to undercut competitors.

Funded with £70m from a levy raised on migrant workers, the Dynamic Response Team will “support those communities that are feeling the impact of migration most strongly”, the department said.

“This team is one of the ways we are looking to get even better results, by making sure our most experienced officers are working on the toughest and most complex cases,” an HMRC representative told AccountingWEB.co.uk.

“The best protection we can offer workers and compliant businesses is to ensure that arrears do not arise in the first place. That is why we strengthened the enforcement regime in April - including automatic penalties, fair arrears to compensate workers for the time they have had to wait before being repaid, and an option for the most serious criminal offences to be tried in a Crown Court (which can potentially impose an unlimited fine) instead of limiting all cases to the Magistrates’ Court, where the maximum fine available is £5,000.”

Continued...

Federal Minimum Wage...

Karra_O | Fri, 22/01/2010 - 08:41 | Permalink

The issue about the Federal minimum wage is already affecting the standard of living of American families. Recently, the decision was made to lower the Colorado minimum wage by 3 cents an hour – though it's only 3 cents an hour, and over a year it doesn't even add up to the average size of payday loans, but it does make an impact. Minimum wages set a price floor for labor, and minimum wage in itself is barely sustainable for people who earn it. Thus, employers will not be able to retain staff if they pay awful wages, and there's a justification for that.