@Profile Newsletter - March 2017
Welcome to the spring 2017 edition of @Profile, your quarterly insight into the latest IT and legislative news and updates. It's the first day of Spring and Payroll end of year is nearly upon us, with it comes all the latest changes to your Payroll system that will be making their way to you soon via our dedicated SystemCare Support team. In this edition we'll also be talking about the future of Opera II, some mandatory changes forthcoming in 'making tax digital', and how you can go green this Spring with paperless solutions for your documents and payslips. This newsletter is packed with important information, so let's get started.
-The Profile Team .
Payroll Year End - What's New?
The end of the tax year is upon us and with it comes the new Payroll changes that will affect you and your business in 2017/18. If you've not had a chance to read up on the changes, please read our summary below.
Apprenticeship Levy
The Apprenticeship Levy is being introduced to help young people get into apprenticeship schemes by putting the money from this new tax into funding the education side of an apprenticeship in the UK. The tax will apply to companies who have a pay bill of over 3 million in a year, and will be 0.5% of the pay bill.
National living wage increase for 25 and overs
The national living wage for employees aged 25 or over will rise from £7.20 an hour to £7.50 an hour from April 2017.
Gender pay gap reporting
From 6th April 2017, employers will need to submit and publish information about their gender pay gap and gender bonus gap annually. This will only affect you if you have over 250 employees.
1150L standard PAYE code
As of 6th April 2017 the new standard PAYE code will be 1150L, this means that employees standard tax-free personal allowance will be £11,500 for 2017/2018 tax year.
Salary Sacrifice Schemes
As of 6th April 2017 employees who are involved in Salary Sacrifice Schemes will no longer see the savings on their tax and NI contributions, and will pay the normal amount of tax.
Opera II - The Writing's on the Wall
Opera 3 is Pegasus' current flagship product, but there are some remaining customers who are still using Opera II even now, despite the product being outdated and Pegasus putting it into 'maintenence mode', which means it will not receive any updates to functionality or compatability.
With the release of Office 2016, Office 365 and Windows Server 2016, Opera II users will find that none of these new products and systems are compatible with their current pegasus software, which means it will become increasingly difficult to plan how your business' infrastructure will grow and evolve around a product that won't be receiving compatability upgrades.
We recently sent a letter out to our Opera II customers explaining the ways that HMRC's plans to 'Make Tax Digital', as well as the lack of Opera II support for new systems and software will affect you and your business, below is an exceprt regarding 'Make Tax Ditigal':
Making Tax Digital
You will hopefully already be aware about HMRC’s plans to 'Make Tax Digital' for all individuals and businesses in the UK by 2020. There is a wealth of information available on the HMRC website including a roadmap of the Government's plans in this gov.uk PDF
As a Pegasus customer, you will no doubt want to know how this will affect you and you need to be aware that there is an impact if you are not using Pegasus’ flagship product, Opera 3. Pegasus are not planning to make any functional changes to Opera II to enable sending tax information digitally to the HMRC. This will be a mandatory requirement for most businesses from April 2018. More information on these changes can be found in this gov.uk PDF
If you are not already, we strongly recommend speaking to your Account Manager about this especially if you are still running Opera II. Alternatively, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any concerns.
Going Green - Document Management & Email Payslips in Opera 3
With Easter next month, spring is well and truly on it's way! In the spirit of life, rebirth and trees returning to their regular green hue, we're challenging our customers to join us in "Going Green in 2017"!
As we all know, paper comes from trees, and over 109,000,000 tonnes of paper have been produced this year alone, which is a lot of trees cut down and pulped. Do you ever stop to think how much uneccesary paper your business is using, and what simple things you can do to reduce this?
The Document Management Application in Opera 3 allows you to save and view your documents digitally within Opera, which means no more printing and filing. Any file type can be captured and retrieved, and users can be given different levels of access rights to ensure the securityof confidential documents. Employees not using Opera 3 can also access the document manager through a standalone app.
Every time you pay your employees you could be sending their payslips directly to their email inbox instead of printing out hundreds, maybe even thousands of pieces of paper on a regular basis. The latest version of Opera 3 being distributed currently contains email payslips as standard, for more information, assistance with setting it up, or for training on using email payslips in your business, please speak to your account manager or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
