The top 10 questions April 2018: taxation of termination payments and GDPR

New rules on the taxation of termination payments came into force in April 2018. All payments in lieu of notice will now be subject to tax and national insurance.

The taxation of payments in lieu of notice is the subject of the most popular FAQ on XpertHR in April. Employers were also asking about the effect of the new rules on payments made under settlement agreements.

With less than a month to go until the GDPR comes into force, questions about the retention of personal data, subject access requests and other aspects of data protection were also popular.

The top 10 HR questions in April 2018:

1. If an employer pays an employee in lieu of notice, is the payment taxable?

2. For how long should an employer keep an employee or ex-employee’s personnel files?

3. Can documentation relating to disciplinary warnings be retained after the warnings have expired?

4. In what circumstances is travelling time included in the working time calculation?

5. What information must employers supply to employees about the processing of their personal data under the GDPR?

6. Are payments made under a settlement agreement taxable?

7. Who should be consulted about employee redundancies?

8. Other than consent, what legal grounds will there be for processing personal data under the GDPR?

9. Where an unsuccessful job applicant asks for details of why he or she was not offered the job is the employer obliged to disclose those details?

10. How can employers that do not pay the apprenticeship levy fund apprenticeships?