Christmas Bonus

[BigBen]

Google [bot] said:

Membership to jelly of the month club? Nice.

[Helicopter123]

schmunk said:

The 1% employer contribution will be going up to 2% in April 2018, and 3% in April 2019. They'll be wanting you to work weekends to pay for it...

https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions/what-you-you...

You are allowed to opt out of a workplace pension (but why would you, if there's no alternative payment?)

https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions/if-you-want-...

And employee contributions going from 1% to 3% to 5%.

Significant additional cost for employer, take home pay cut for the employee.

I believe in Pensions but very few recognise that this is not 'free' money.

[jakesmith]

James_B said:

There are some things that common sense works far better for than trying to draft a policy that covers every occasion.

We don’t have policies on how long you should spend in the toilet, what you should wear, or how much swearing is acceptable when, but there are ways of doing the wrong thing there, too.

The line is probably between people who get a discretionary bonus and those who don’t. If someone’s getting a significant amount at year-end on top of good basic pay then I don’t expect to see a £50taxi receipt when they stayed at work no later than they normally stay for after work events.

If a policy has been designed to allow people who are working bloody hard, some comfort and convenience, who are you to tell them they earn too much to follow it? What a nightmare. Completely different from not having a time in toilet policy what a stupid example

I have a friend who is a city lawyer on big $ and lives in Bedford. They lay taxis on if he works late. It can cost him £150 to get home and sometimes he has to do this frequently. Do you honestly think he should suck it up? £30k of gross income a year? 10% of what he might earn?

Another friend worked for a bank who do the same thing. Work till 9pm claim dinner, work till 10pm claim a taxi home. They do it all the time it's a good incentive to them

Another friend is a fund manager and lives in Wimbledon, can't get in early enough on public transport so gets a taxi and claims that

All on decent wedge mid-high 6 or maybe 7 figure packages, and it's perfectly acceptable in the rules & culture to follow the policy. The policy is there to be used. I don't understand why you think that earning over a threshold means you can't follow certain policies.

[Antony Moxey]

[quote]I have a friend who is a city lawyer on big $ and lives in Bedford. They lay taxis on if he works late. It can cost him £150 to get home and sometimes he has to do this frequently. Do you honestly think he should suck it up? £30k of gross income a year? 10% of what he might earn?.
[/quote]

‘Sometimes has to do this frequently’? If his taxi that ‘can’ cost him £150 is costing £30kpa then that’s 200 days a year he’s getting an £150 taxi. That’s seems a little more than sometimes doing something frequently as I can’t believe you’d wildly exaggerate such figures.

[BigBen]

Antony Moxey][quote said:

I have a friend who is a city lawyer on big $ and lives in Bedford. They lay taxis on if he works late. It can cost him £150 to get home and sometimes he has to do this frequently. Do you honestly think he should suck it up? £30k of gross income a year? 10% of what he might earn?.

‘Sometimes has to do this frequently’? If his taxi that ‘can’ cost him £150 is costing £30kpa then that’s 200 days a year he’s getting an £150 taxi. That’s seems a little more than sometimes doing something frequently as I can’t believe you’d wildly exaggerate such figures.

Unless of course he mentioned gross income.....

[schmunk]

Antony Moxey][quote said:

I have a friend who is a city lawyer on big $ and lives in Bedford. They lay taxis on if he works late. It can cost him £150 to get home and sometimes he has to do this frequently. Do you honestly think he should suck it up? £30k of gross income a year? 10% of what he might earn?.

‘Sometimes has to do this frequently’? If his taxi that ‘can’ cost him £150 is costing £30kpa then that’s 200 days a year he’s getting an £150 taxi. That’s seems a little more than sometimes doing something frequently as I can’t believe you’d wildly exaggerate such figures.

That's £30k of gross income, vs. £150/time from net income, making it 106 taxis/year which is a lot but not outlandish.

I work in a similar business and have access to this data - in the 16/17 tax year our highest individual number of 'late night taxis' was 138, followed by 98, 84, 81, 79, etc. (albeit all of these were within London, so somewhat less than £150/time...)

[jakesmith]

Antony Moxey said:

‘Sometimes has to do this frequently’? If his taxi that ‘can’ cost him £150 is costing £30kpa then that’s 200 days a year he’s getting an £150 taxi. That’s seems a little more than sometimes doing something frequently as I can’t believe you’d wildly exaggerate such figures.

I don't think you've really addressed the question with your tedious nitpicking
Firstly I said gross income, so it's more like 95 trips a year based on 50% tax and NI. Also my figures were a guesstimate based on him doing it twice a week which may be out by a factor or not. I know when he works on big projects he can end up doing this for weeks at a time as he has missed his last train home. Would that just be a cost of doing business to you?
Even if he only had to do this once, if the expense policy allows him to charge back a taxi home, I can't see what makes you think that he should have to use his own money, that he has sweated and missed out on spending time with his family for, just because he is a good earner. Expenses policies are completely different to disciplinary / behavior, and I bet you someone taking toilet breaks for too long as you suggested, would actually be covered in your general disciplinary policy anyway.

[plasticpig]

jakesmith said:

I don't think you've really addressed the question with your tedious nitpicking
Firstly I said gross income, so it's more like 95 trips a year based on 50% tax and NI. Also my figures were a guesstimate based on him doing it twice a week which may be out by a factor or not. I know when he works on big projects he can end up doing this for weeks at a time as he has missed his last train home. Would that just be a cost of doing business to you?
Even if he only had to do this once, if the expense policy allows him to charge back a taxi home, I can't see what makes you think that he should have to use his own money, that he has sweated and missed out on spending time with his family for, just because he is a good earner. Expenses policies are completely different to disciplinary / behavior, and I bet you someone taking toilet breaks for too long as you suggested, would actually be covered in your general disciplinary policy anyway.

He is partly using his own money at any rate. An employer paying an employees travel expenses to and from work is a taxable benefit in kind so your mates tax bill will be significantly higher.

Edited by plasticpig on Tuesday 12th December 18:25

[Antony Moxey]

jakesmith said:

if the expense policy allows him to charge back a taxi home, I can't see what makes you think that he should have to use his own money,

No, neither can I because I said absolutely nothing of the sort. I was merely commenting on the number of taxi trips per year which, from someone who’s used a taxi maybe once or twice in the last half a dozen or so years, seems unusually high and pretty much every working day.

So before you start with the insults again it wasn’t ‘tedious nitpicking’, it was genuine surprise.

[jakesmith]

Antony Moxey said:

No, neither can I because I said absolutely nothing of the sort. I was merely commenting on the number of taxi trips per year which, from someone who’s used a taxi maybe once or twice in the last half a dozen or so years, seems unusually high and pretty much every working day.

So before you start with the insults again it wasn’t ‘tedious nitpicking’, it was genuine surprise.

Apologies I thought you were the poster of this which is what I was responding to initially:

James_B said:

It’s frowned on at my place if some staff claim expenses.

We’ve a firm-wide policy that allows, for example a taxi home and / or your evening meal paid for it you work past 10pm, and the policy doesn’t differentiate on grade in the company.

If a person in a support role had to work late, it’d be fine, but if a member of trading staff did, it’d not go down well at all. The view is that they are paid enough to be able to fork out for their own pizza and taxi.