TUPE and being paid less

JWalkden

Hello,

My husband has recently been TUPE'd and has just received his first first slip and found his take home pay is less.

The previous company ran a scheme (I'm unsure of the actual name of this process) whereby they would effective deduct and repay part of their salary as expenses - this meant they were taxed less so had a bigger take home.

The new company have not done this and as such his take home pay is significantly less than it was.

I've advised him to raise a grievance with HR citing TUPE. But I wanted to check if I'm right before it goes any further as I'm not that knowledgeable on TUPE?

Thank you

Marktheshark

Unless he was actually paying out and can provide receipts for these expenses then he has involved himself in a tax avoidance scheme and will be liable for the unpaid tax.

The new company, is obviously not going to get involved with tax avoidance and can not be made to do so.

MEM62

The previous scheme make little sense to me. Salary is salary and expenses are expenses and the two should not be confused. Before making any kind of complaint I would establish exactly what the old scheme was and make sure whether it was entirely legal. (Sounds to me like a scheme to increase staff take-home pay so that the employer would get away with lower gross salaries)

TELLIT01

It does sound rather as if the old scheme was a way to pay less tax and NI for the employer too. Probably legal, but I don't see any way to force the new employer to use the same creative accounting practices. If the annual / weekly gross pay remains the same I don't see that the new employer is doing anything wrong.

Takeaway_Addict

The first thing would also to not be going in all guns blazing raising a grievance.

What happened to just talking to them first and asking them why its changed?

sangie595

TELLIT01 wrote: »

It does sound rather as if the old scheme was a way to pay less tax and NI for the employer too. Probably legal, but I don't see any way to force the new employer to use the same creative accounting practices. If the annual / weekly gross pay remains the same I don't see that the new employer is doing anything wrong.

Definitely not legal! It's called fraud. Luckily the employees can claim ignorance, and if it's questioned the old employer is the one in trouble. But there is no way to persuade the new employer to do the same thing - you would be asking them to break the law. TUPE does not include the right to force the employer to unlawfully avoid tax because that is what their old one did! The new employer is paying the correct wage, and acting within the law. A grievance won't get you anywhere.