The Federation for Small Businesses has criticised the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, for his failure to put forward a timetable for putting into practise, direct payments for working tax credits. Mr Brown first introduced the plan for the Inland Revenue to pay the working tax credits directly to claimants in the last budget speech, but almost a year on, no one has any idea when this will be. The Federation of Small Businesses has stated that the administration on small businesses of benefits payments such as tax credits is immense. They are also appealing to the Government to take back responsibility for the payment of Statutory Maternity pay.
Our view:
We totally agree with the FSB on this one. We experience that administrative burden every month of having to collect and indeed give out tax and tax credits. The system is literally a nightmare to follow. The credits received for a bewildering array of effective dates when they should be made to employees is staggering. We have given up and now also keep manual records for employees who receive credits (and we are not technophobes). We can only sympathise with those who don't use computers.