Save Time When Processing Your Agency’s Expenses

Travel and subsistence expenses are daily occurrences for recruitment professionals. Therefore, it is essential recruitment agencies have a reliable process in place, particularly when it comes to reporting their whole team’s annual expenses. At the end of every tax year agencies are required to report reimbursed expenses and benefits paid to their employees on forms P11D (which have to be submitted by 6 July following the end of the tax year). However, as the expenses incurred by recruiters are commonly routine, non-taxable expenses, such as travel, phone bills and entertainment, you should be making use of dispensations. Dispensations effectively allow you to not report your expenses to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and therefore ensure you will not pay tax and National Insurance on them. Furthermore, you will not need to report the expenses you have a dispensation for on the P11D, which significantly reduces the administration required. Once dispensations have been applied for, they can only be back dated to the beginning of that tax year. Therefore,you only have until the 5th April 2015 if you wish to use dispensations for the expenses of your employees in the 2014/15 tax year. TIP: Do not forget to tell HMRC if anything you have included in your dispensation changes. If you do not, HMRC are within their rights to cancel the dispensation and ask you to pay back any tax you owe.

Dispensations can be applied for at any time via the HMRC website.