From 2017 some employers will be required to pay a new apprenticeship levy. This will be charged at a rate of 0.5% of an employer’s pay bill where the annual pay bill is greater than £3,000,000.
The pay bill is the same as the total NI-able pay except that it does not include any earnings of employees who are under 16 or who are not subject to UK NICs legislation (so anyone using NI code X) nor any payments to employees working abroad that are making employee only contributions. This can be handled in Coins ERP+ by using a logical caption ZEROERNI.
The £3,000,000 minimum pay bill rule is handled via an annual levy allowance of £15,000 per employer which offsets the levy liability. The levy liability is calculated on a cumulative monthly basis and the annual allowance is prorated for the year before being offset against this.
Apprenticeship Levy - HMRC Workbench RTI
On an EPS record, the ‘Recoverable Year to Date’ tab has been renamed ‘Year to Date Amounts’.
A new ‘Apprenticeship Levy’ layout has been added with fields for the annual allowance allocated to this PAYE scheme and the year to date levy due.
HMRC Workbench EPS Record
Annual Allowance
The annual apprenticeship levy allowance allocated to this PAYE scheme. This is a user input value.
The annual levy is per employer and can be split across the PAYE schemes the employer uses in any way they like. When you save the EPS return record, the total annual allowance across all PAYE schemes is compared to the full annual apprenticeship levy allowance. If there is any unallocated allowance then an information message about this is displayed. If the total allocated exceeds the full annual allowance then an error message about this is displayed.
Levy Due
The year to date apprenticeship levy due.
After the first EPS for 2017 the annual allowance value defaults from the previously submitted value.
Coins ERP+ automatically calculates the levy due.
If the tax month is changed, Coins ERP+ also recalculates the recoverable amounts, limiting the values to the year to date position at the end of the chosen tax month.