Any Answers Answered: NI contributions
TAXtv's Giles Mooney and Tim Good kick off the new tax year by tackling two questions from the Any Answers forum on national insurance contributions and the tax implications of paying an employee a lower amount.
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Having always stuck to the simple mantra (for when PAYE needs to be applied) of "on date of payment, irrespective of when hours worked" - and having never been corrected in meetings with HMRC and DWP specialists - it was an eye-opener to hear Tim's reference to 'the date when a person becomes *entitled* to payment of earnings'.
So I've investigated further and, aside of course of finding that Tim is quite correct (which throws a lot of onus on the quality of the employment contract details), I found something else that was news to me ... the concept of a 'waiver' to that entitlement date:
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim42290
"It can happen that payment is made after the date the employee is entitled to be paid. For example, to help out a hard-pressed employer, employees may agree not to draw their pay. In this situation they are deemed to have been paid on the day they were entitled to be paid. However, if employees have effectively waived their rights to receive earnings before the date when entitlement arises they are not treated as having “received” earnings."
I think this may only apply where the waiver is 'forever' not just 'delayed', but the waters get murkier.