I’ve been looking back through my tax records for the past few years, to claim the various allowances and tax relief we are entitled to.
I used to submit my F80s in quarterly batches, rather than submitting after each activity. This means that, for those weeks, my “pay” (in the eyes of HMRC) was over the NI threshold. So I’ve paid NI that, if I had been submitting forms regularly, I would not have had to pay.
(There’s some additional complication here, as I don’t know whether HQAC tell HMRC that we are paid weekly, two-weekly, four-weekly or monthly, as I think that affects the threshold value used to perform the calculation.)
As far as I know, there’s no way for me to claim this back, as it was taken correctly. Just a heads up to other people (as it’s lost me about £100 in total) to submit forms regularly, and not let them build up.
As a caveat to that, a colleague who is self employed pointed out that you can ask for VA without deductions, as it is then handled via self assessment.
Not sure what proof HQAC would need or whether it would be handled via tax code.
I’ve been had by this before after submitting a claim for a week camp along with a couple of weekends all in one go. It’s a pain and I would always advise to keep your claims regular and not build them up.
Hopefully a thing of the past when the pay goes digital.
And for those who prefer not to claim F80s - if your Sqn is registered for Gift Aid, I would recommend that you do (and even if not, I’d recommend the same) and donate directly to your Sqn for + additional %. Use it or lose it etc.
Assuming you have a main job as well, then you can ask for any tax owing to be deducted via your tax code so I guess you could ask for VA to be paid without deductions, but that would only postpone the pain not abolish it…
It really is silly. It is in almost every way the same as pay. I would assume if someone challenged the lack of pension legally they’d probably win and set precedent. People like to say “But oh it isn’t pay it’s remuneration” when remuneration by definition is pay. It’s entirely bonkers to me.
Also, anyone who can’t pronounce and spell remuneration should be banned from using the word: which is about 50% of permanent staff.
Renumeration is what happens when you tell them ‘Tallest on the right, shortest on the left…’ and it’s a new group so they get new numbers!
The dull answer is… We don’t earn enough from RAFAC for automatic enrolment in a pension scheme (£6240 is the threshold). We ‘might’ be entitled to join a scheme, but the MOD isn’t obliged to contribute anything to it.
If it was possible to join the MOD pension scheme, that would be a nice perk. The contributions could add up over 20-30 years service!
