It still seemed a long way off when, in early 2017, wrote regarding the payment of the Low-Income Benefit (LIV) during 2018.
LIV Decisions
The Tax and Customs Administration has announced on its website that today, 12 July 2018, the first final LIV decisions will be sent by post to employers who are entitled to this allowance towards their wage costs. The final decisions are expected to be delivered on 21 July. The Tax and Customs Administration will pay out the amount stated in the decision within six weeks.
If the decision is incorrect, you can, of course, lodge an objection. You must set out your objections in writing. The Tax and Customs Administration must receive your notice of objection within 6 weeks of the date of the decision.
The final decisions were preceded by provisional decisions back in March 2018. Proposals for corrections to those decisions could be submitted to the Tax and Customs Administration until 1 May 2018. If you have not submitted a proposal for correction, you can, of course, still submit your corrections now by lodging an appeal.
The decisions are based on the data that the Tax and Customs Administration derives from the payroll records kept for 2017.
“Primark bonus”
The FNV describes the LIV in a article on its website as the “Primark bonus”. The trade union believes that the scheme has the undesirable side-effect of encouraging companies to deliberately keep wages low so that they can claim the LIV. The FNV cites Primark, Zara and H&M, amongst others, as examples of such companies. The same is said to apply to call centres.
The FNV had previously pointed out that the LIV is used in conjunction with the 30% tax scheme (the tax-free allowance for extraterritorial expenses incurred by employees based abroad). It is claimed that companies in the temporary employment sector in particular stand to benefit from this. We have explained this in a article.
The FNV believes that the government should allocate funds to help people on low incomes find work, rather than subsidising companies that are making huge profits.