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Employers and HR bodies have called for urgent reform of the Apprenticeship Levy. Some critics say the current system is inflexible and inaccessible, while others complain it benefits people that are already in management positions.
Tesco’s Chief Executive Ken Murphy has been particularly scathing of the scheme, which affects all large employers - including umbrella companies.
Reports suggest that the Government is planning to lure retired middle-aged workers back to the workplace to help boost the economy.
In recent months, problems like inflation have been intensified by low levels of economic activity amongst some working-age people.
Revealed on Thursday, the Chancellor’s new plan to ‘restore stability’ and ‘build long-term prosperity’ will involve billions of pounds of tax rises and spending cuts.
It comes at a time when many households are already struggling with higher prices and falling real incomes. So what does the Autumn Budget mean for you and your family?
New figures suggest that dodgy umbrella companies could be costing thousands of temporary workers through lost holiday pay.
Freelance support group IWORK calculated that at an average salary of £26,000 per year, umbrella workers would be missing out on more than £3,000 of holiday pay.
They estimate that if just 2% of the UK’s 1.6 million temps are affected, they would be shortchanged by a collective £97 million per year.
In his September ‘mini-budget,’ the new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng dropped an IR35 bombshell, reversing recent reforms in the Public and Private Sectors.
The announcement left some contractors with important questions that we’ve tried to answer in this blog post.
Inflation and frozen tax bands mean that more than one million people will pay the higher rate of tax by 2027, new figures released by HMRC show.
The tax authority is forecasting that 1.13 million people will be pulled above the 40% tax threshold by 2027/28, as wages rise quickly and tax bands stay at the same level.
UK wages rose in the three months to October, but continued falling in real terms amid the ongoing cost of living crisis.
Figures also revealed that while unemployment is still low, it increased slightly to 3.7%. Meanwhile the number of open job vacancies fell by 65,000 to 1.19 million.
The Office for National Statistics figures show that both average total pay (including bonuses) and regular pay (excluding bonuses) increased by 6.1% between August and October 2022.
Contracting and other types of flexible working could help bring more over-50s back into the workforce. That’s according to Umbrella.co.uk director Miles Grady.
The Bank of England has expressed concern at the rising number of over-50s not in work or looking for work in recent months.
Jeremy Hunt has scrapped plans to reform off-payroll working rules (IR35) days after replacing Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor.
IR35 rules apply to contractors that operate through a limited company. Currently, a contractor’s IR35 status is assessed by the contractor’s client, but Kwasi Kwarteng’s now infamous mini-budget included plans for contractors to determine their own IR35 status from April 2023.
Britain’s unemployment rate reached 3.6% in the three months to July 2022. This figure was down 0.2 percentage points on the previous quarter and represents the lowest rate since 1974.
