List of things HMRC really care about:
- Collecting tax
5 Likes
true, but they also care about how much effort (expense) its going to cost them to both determine whether tax is due, and then recover it.
an organisation obsessed with paperwork and with very clear records showing who received what - and for what - is going to present a somewhat easier target, and tax haul, than second hand car dealers, or strip clubs, or circuses that overwhelmingly deal in cash and have have a transient workforce.
low hanging fruit is, i believe, the appropriate termâŚ
1 Like
By all means ask HMRC legal, they will give you the HMRC definition of employment. But, from https://www.gov.uk/employment-status/employee
âa person may be an employee in employment law but have a different status for tax purposes. Employers must work out each workerâs status in both employment and tax lawâ
So they are potentially different definitions.
Good luck of you think the law is black and white, there are loads of gray areas which require detailed analysis of the specific facts, a balancing exercise etc and which may depend on how a judge exercise his or her discretion. An appeal court wonât overturn a decision to call someone an employee (or not) just because they would have ruled differently if the first instance judge had the discretion to rule as he did.
Is this actually going somewhere? Or are we going to have the same conversations that have been done to death for at least 15 years if not longer?
3 Likes
Hahahahahaha!
If that was even remotely true, I wouldnât have a job!
1 Like
Well weâre all on PAYE, so very little effort.
1 Like
No bring a lawyer and not really looked into this topic in great deal. Why has the MoD gone down the road of making all cadet forces staff âvolunteersâ? When i joined the ATC as a CI then WO i got paid a days pay for a days work. Everything was hunky dory. Then i a CFAV and got VA. What has changed?
I was young i always told long ago that the staff of the ATC were like the TA; volunteers in the sence that we volunteered to wear the queens uniform in a very small back water of the RAF.
Calling us CFAVs and saying that volunteers donât get paid they get VA seems to have opened a can of worms in relation to employment and tax law.
Would it have been simpler and easier just to give us a contract of employment and just pay us?
1 Like
That seems to have gone out of the window since they foolishly decided to remove the requirement for extension of service - which wouldâve made the âold styleâ sensible.
1 Like
Why?
The extension of service is a bizarre concept in a volunteering context, but another hang over from the pretence we are something military, since the military is the only âplaceâ Iâve heard of people extending their service. Iâve never been asked at work if I want to continue working here.
Service extension in the Air Cadets was only a way of people trying to get rid of people they didnât like. Although it did give individuals a point in time to consider if they wanted to carry on. A bit like the old upper age limit for uniform, which gave a people a point to consider if or how they continued and in some ways forced younger staff to step up and made Wing etc think more seriously about succession. There is now almost an acceptance that people will carry on until they are 65.
We wouldnât be employed and paid in a formal manner as that would give us things like a pension, (given all employees are entitled to one), holiday etc.
Loads of jobs are fixed term contracts where you need to really at the end of the period
But you would have a contract and know this at the start. But the vast majority of people will work in a job until they die, decide to leave, made redundant or sacked.
The idea of saying to someone who volunteers you have to decide to carry on or whatever is a nonsense as you could end up shooting you leg off. I wonder if the requirement to formally extend in the Air Cadets is a result of losing adults over the years and struggling to get more in.
There is no Tax Issue surrounding g VA as everyone pays via PAYE (or opts out and puts it on a self assessment).
If HMRC were to take a look at the RAFAC they may well say âhow can you claim that these arenât employees and that this isnât payâ, but since the organisation already treats us as employees and we all pay the appropriate Tax and National Insurance the organisation is already doing things correctly as far as HMRC are concerned.
Now if they were calling our Pay, Volunteer Allowance amd then not paying the relevant Tax then they would have an issue, but they donât so their isnât.
2 Likes
Yeah, HMRC literally donât give a damn about whether we are actually employees, when we pay them as if we were.
4 Likes
I wonder is there anywhere else that people get a volunteerâs allowance and pay tax on it?
ACF & SCC for a start.
Itâs a taxable allowance, but not pay to avoid the employment aspects such as paid holiday & pension.
I wonât moan while its there, I wonât be too bothered if it goes, but it certainly helped cover my unpaid leave day from work last week to take cadets chinook flyingâŚ
1 Like
Do SCC get volunteer allowance?
Genuine question as I was always under the impression there funding from the MoD was limited/non existent so assumed they didnât get VA
without any of the benefitsâŚ
1 Like