Yvonne Drum - my problem is that the answer you have for Example 4 is pretty much what they say for example 5, so why bother with example 4 at all? especially as they ignore the tax treatment of the £20k completely in Ex.4 but properly explain it for £18k in Ex.5??
Is it me or do examples 3 and 4 not really work on the HMRC Factsheet?
Example 3
“I have a non-dividend income of £6,500, and a dividend income of £12,000 from shares outside of an ISA”
With a Personal Allowance of £11,000, £7,500 of the dividends are under the threshold for tax. A further £5,000 comes within the Dividend Allowance, leaving tax to pay at Basic Rate (7.5%) on £2,500.
£6,500+£7,500 = £14,000, not £11,000 or £7,500+£5,000+£2,500 = £15,000 dividends.
Example 4
“I have a non-dividend income of £20,000, and receive dividends of £6,000 outside of an ISA”
You won’t need to pay tax on the first £5,000 of dividends due to the Dividend Allowance, but will pay tax on £1,000 of dividends at 7.5%.
This one doesn't mention what happens to the £20,000 non-dividend income, whereas example 5 then goes on to say what happens when non-dividend income is only £18,000!
If this example should read £2,000 non-dividend income, does that mean that the balance of £1,000 over the dividend allowance is not covered by the personal allowance?
Knowing that 20% will need to improve would indicate that they already know who the 20% are, or else the whole process is going to be a sham. You cannot put figures on this at the start of the process, surely at the end you tally the results and comes up with the figures?
That would be like a tax payer starting with the tax figure they wanted to pay, then working their income and expenses from that - a process I'm sure HMRC would not be pleased about.
In order for appraisals to work effectively, they need to be done by managers who know the employees well enough to be able to appraise their work. They need to be well thought out and designed to suit the jobs being undertaken. A one-size fits all will never produce the results you wish for.
The point of an appraisal is to identify staff strengths and weaknesses, then identify ways to utlise their strengths and improve upon their weaknesses. Any system where the employe dictates to the manager a % for each category is doomed to failure, either by managers not caring, or staff feeling demotivated.
If you have a team of 10 people who are all doing amazing work, does their manager have to pick one to praise, 2 to berate and leave the other 7 as "adequate" - you can only begin to imagine the level of job satisfaction when they are told "well actually you've all done brilliantly, but I have targets to meet"
If you are going to replace a system, make sure the one you replace it with is actually better than the one you get rid of.
Set long term goals, rather than short term. This would encourage all other sales reps to get closer relationships with their customers as they are looking to build relationships, rather than quick sales.
Encourage salesmen to emulate his attitude, rather than the usual ultra-competetive attitudes, by doing away with short term targets and looking more at soft qualities rather than targeting figures.
Try not to pressurise the sales force and look for customer satisfaction over short term increases in sales. A happy customer will keep coming back, without any hard-sell needed. They will also make recommendations that are worth more to a company than any hard-sell could ever achieve.
Alternatively:
Take a sample of his biological makeup to a biologist with very low ethical standards to illegally clone you a copy. Then you will have to nurture the clone in the same way this man has been nurtured for a number of years and hope that the result is a perfect clone, as you would have to wait a long time to try again!
Personally I'd try altering the approach to sales targets first as the other could land you with a prison sentence (human cloning is not legal yet)
Thanks to a quick response from Sage re this (actually beaten to it by Digita with a well timed marketing call!) I now am more settled.
Apparently we will still be able to file ixbrl compatible accounts, Sage will issue a new bit of software that will do most of the work (ironically written by Thomson Reuters - i.e. Digita!!!) and 80% of it will be done. Also thanks to the lenient approach by HMRC it shouldn't be so bad. So effectively the problem wont result in upsetting clients or late filing penalties or backlogging work until the software is fixed!
The main part of the problem would appear to be Sage trying to do too much - rather than just settling for ixbrl, they wanted to go three steps further and massively improve the useability of the product (SAP/SAPA). Unfortunately they underestimated the amount of work this would take and now have serious egg on their face.
Well as the saying goes - there's no such thing as bad publicity! At least they have the Sage brand headlining the news again.
Gives us something different to talk about than the January filing deadline anyway
I suppose that's what happens when you build a software company by buying the competition, rather than building your own software. You end up having to learn someone else's software after upsetting all the staff who knew it inside out and backwards. Then along comes a major tweak and no one left knows enough to get you out of the mess.
At least when Iris reinvented itself a few years back, going from one databse to Sequel, it knew all of the software was written in the same language. SAp, SAPA, C Tax etc are all different languages, therefore no wonder it is a problem trying to shoehorn them all into talking to each other.
Compulsory rebranding for plc's every year - would stimulate the economy and generate additional income for advertising, stationery firms etc and hence increase the tax take.
One-off Tattoo tax - automatic flat rate tax levy of £100 per tattoo.
Health tax - fast foods 50%, health foods 5% refund - encouraging healthy eating and reducing the price of healthier foods - would cut the health service costs.
Lie detectors to be fitted to politicians - flat rate levy of £50 per lie detected in any televised interviews. To come from their pay - would effectively get them to pay for the privilege of being a politician, or encourage the truth (yeah right)
Phone-in TV show profits to be taxed at 150% - may encourage some better standard of TV.
My answers
The problem is...
Yvonne Drum - my problem is that the answer you have for Example 4 is pretty much what they say for example 5, so why bother with example 4 at all? especially as they ignore the tax treatment of the £20k completely in Ex.4 but properly explain it for £18k in Ex.5??
Thanks
Much appreciated clarification. I was reading "under the threshold for tax" as under the personal allowance, not "chargeable to tax"
Can HMRC add up?
Is it me or do examples 3 and 4 not really work on the HMRC Factsheet?
Example 3
“I have a non-dividend income of £6,500, and a dividend income of £12,000 from shares outside of an ISA”
With a Personal Allowance of £11,000, £7,500 of the dividends are under the threshold for tax. A further £5,000 comes within the Dividend Allowance, leaving tax to pay at Basic Rate (7.5%) on £2,500.
£6,500+£7,500 = £14,000, not £11,000 or £7,500+£5,000+£2,500 = £15,000 dividends.
Example 4
“I have a non-dividend income of £20,000, and receive dividends of £6,000 outside of an ISA”
You won’t need to pay tax on the first £5,000 of dividends due to the Dividend Allowance, but will pay tax on £1,000 of dividends at 7.5%.
This one doesn't mention what happens to the £20,000 non-dividend income, whereas example 5 then goes on to say what happens when non-dividend income is only £18,000!
If this example should read £2,000 non-dividend income, does that mean that the balance of £1,000 over the dividend allowance is not covered by the personal allowance?
If you start knowing the result...
the process becomes meaningless.
Knowing that 20% will need to improve would indicate that they already know who the 20% are, or else the whole process is going to be a sham. You cannot put figures on this at the start of the process, surely at the end you tally the results and comes up with the figures?
That would be like a tax payer starting with the tax figure they wanted to pay, then working their income and expenses from that - a process I'm sure HMRC would not be pleased about.
In order for appraisals to work effectively, they need to be done by managers who know the employees well enough to be able to appraise their work. They need to be well thought out and designed to suit the jobs being undertaken. A one-size fits all will never produce the results you wish for.
The point of an appraisal is to identify staff strengths and weaknesses, then identify ways to utlise their strengths and improve upon their weaknesses. Any system where the employe dictates to the manager a % for each category is doomed to failure, either by managers not caring, or staff feeling demotivated.
If you have a team of 10 people who are all doing amazing work, does their manager have to pick one to praise, 2 to berate and leave the other 7 as "adequate" - you can only begin to imagine the level of job satisfaction when they are told "well actually you've all done brilliantly, but I have targets to meet"
If you are going to replace a system, make sure the one you replace it with is actually better than the one you get rid of.
Cloning
how about:
Set long term goals, rather than short term. This would encourage all other sales reps to get closer relationships with their customers as they are looking to build relationships, rather than quick sales.
Encourage salesmen to emulate his attitude, rather than the usual ultra-competetive attitudes, by doing away with short term targets and looking more at soft qualities rather than targeting figures.
Try not to pressurise the sales force and look for customer satisfaction over short term increases in sales. A happy customer will keep coming back, without any hard-sell needed. They will also make recommendations that are worth more to a company than any hard-sell could ever achieve.
Alternatively:
Take a sample of his biological makeup to a biologist with very low ethical standards to illegally clone you a copy. Then you will have to nurture the clone in the same way this man has been nurtured for a number of years and hope that the result is a perfect clone, as you would have to wait a long time to try again!
Personally I'd try altering the approach to sales targets first as the other could land you with a prison sentence (human cloning is not legal yet)
Thanks Sage
Thanks to a quick response from Sage re this (actually beaten to it by Digita with a well timed marketing call!) I now am more settled.
Apparently we will still be able to file ixbrl compatible accounts, Sage will issue a new bit of software that will do most of the work (ironically written by Thomson Reuters - i.e. Digita!!!) and 80% of it will be done. Also thanks to the lenient approach by HMRC it shouldn't be so bad. So effectively the problem wont result in upsetting clients or late filing penalties or backlogging work until the software is fixed!
The main part of the problem would appear to be Sage trying to do too much - rather than just settling for ixbrl, they wanted to go three steps further and massively improve the useability of the product (SAP/SAPA). Unfortunately they underestimated the amount of work this would take and now have serious egg on their face.
Well as the saying goes - there's no such thing as bad publicity! At least they have the Sage brand headlining the news again.
Gives us something different to talk about than the January filing deadline anyway
Well done Sage
I suppose that's what happens when you build a software company by buying the competition, rather than building your own software. You end up having to learn someone else's software after upsetting all the staff who knew it inside out and backwards. Then along comes a major tweak and no one left knows enough to get you out of the mess.
At least when Iris reinvented itself a few years back, going from one databse to Sequel, it knew all of the software was written in the same language. SAp, SAPA, C Tax etc are all different languages, therefore no wonder it is a problem trying to shoehorn them all into talking to each other.
Only draw back is, we use SAGE!
Not happy at all about this.
Rebranding
Compulsory rebranding for plc's every year - would stimulate the economy and generate additional income for advertising, stationery firms etc and hence increase the tax take.
One-off Tattoo tax - automatic flat rate tax levy of £100 per tattoo.
Health tax - fast foods 50%, health foods 5% refund - encouraging healthy eating and reducing the price of healthier foods - would cut the health service costs.
Lie detectors to be fitted to politicians - flat rate levy of £50 per lie detected in any televised interviews. To come from their pay - would effectively get them to pay for the privilege of being a politician, or encourage the truth (yeah right)
Phone-in TV show profits to be taxed at 150% - may encourage some better standard of TV.