Cox Costello & Horne publish industry news and business news to keep our customers informed of new business and tax regulations
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Freeport operators will be able to take advantage of a zero rate of secondary national insurance contributions (NICs) for employees, the government has announced. The National Insurance Contributions Bill, which legislates reliefs for those operating in Freeports, has now been published. The Bill confirms that from April 2022, organisations with employees spending 60% or more of their time in a Freeport site will be eligible for relief on secondary Class 1 NICs for 36 months. The relief will be available to new employees earning up to £25,000 per annum. The Bill also ensures that where an employer makes no secondary NICs in respect of an employee because of the Freeports relief, the employee's earnings are nevertheless taken into account for the purposes of calculating apprenticeship levy. In 2020 the government consulted on proposals to create up to ten Freeports across the UK. A UK Freeport will be a geographical area with a diameter up to 45km which is closely linked to a seaport, airport or rail port. East Midlands Airport, Felixstowe and Harwich, Humber, Liverpool City Region, Plymouth and South Devon, Solent, Teesside and Thames have been successful in the Freeports bidding process for England. The government is now proposing a range of measures covering customs, tax reliefs, planning, regeneration funding and innovation to create Freeports as national hubs for global trade and investment across the UK.
HMRC has also issued a warning to taxpayers to be aware of copycat HMRC websites and phishing scams.
The largest falls in jobs since February 2020 have been in the hospitality sector, among those aged under 25 years, and those living in London.
The UK government has confirmed that its plastic packaging tax (PPT) will come into force on 1 April 2022. The PPT was announced in the Spring Budget and will be charged at a rate of £200 per metric ton of chargeable plastic packaging components of a single specification. It will apply to plastic packaging manufactured in or imported into the UK. Plastic covered by the tax include bioplastics, including biodegradable, compostable and oxo-degradable plastics. The tax will not be chargeable on plastic packaging which has 30% or more recycled plastic content, or where the packaging is made of multiple materials of which plastic is not proportionately the heaviest when measured by weight. This includes importers of packaging which already contain goods, such as plastic bottles filled with drinks and where the imported packaging already contains other goods as the tax only applies to the plastic packaging itself. There will be a number of exemptions, including for packaging human medicines, but the government says the list of exempt packaging will be short. The introduction of the plastic packaging tax is designed to encourage the use of recycled rather than new plastic within plastic packaging and will in turn stimulate increased levels of recycling and collection of plastic waste, diverting it away from landfill or incineration. See gov.uk for further information.
The call for evidence also asks stakeholders whether they believe the OTS is sufficiently independent from the government, and whether it has the correct breadth of expertise on its board.
'With so many fraud allegations being made to HMRC during the COVID-19 crisis, there is no doubt that many of them will end up being false,' said Kevin Igoe, Managing Director at PfP.
School closures and a large fall in retail sales earlier in the quarter dragged down economic growth, said the ONS. The economy is now 8.7% smaller than before the pandemic.
For many manufacturers, apprenticeships are key to unlocking our recovery and building a strong industrial base in the UK,' said Bhavina Bharkhada, Senior Campaigns and Skills Policy Manager at Make UK
