Look after number one

Make Sure Your PAYE Code Is Correct

Your tax code reflects your allowances, benefits, pension arrangements and or any tax adjustments to which you are entitled. The numeric part of the code is a tenth of the sum of these. (The alpha suffix is used for other purposes and need not concern us here.)

It therefore behoves you to check your code. If it isn’t correct you could either be paying too much tax or too little and the latter will merely be building up a bill for the future.

Your Remuneration Package

Does the sum of your salary and benefits befit your status, experience and qualifications? Here’s a checklist:

• salary
• bonus
• pension
• share incentive arrangements
• life assurance
• health care
• level of expenses - business travel in first or business class and matching hotel
• choice of a company car or additional salary and re-imbursement of car expenses in your own car
• mobile phone
• use of a computer at home and contributions to the additional costs of working at home
• advantageous loans

Remember there are tax and national insurance implications in nearly all of these which should be considered when evaluating your package.

Company Cars

The company car has long been a bone of contention, depending on where you were in the discussion. Nowadays, however, the taxman, after a long campaign, has equalised the advantage and disadvantages as far as he can. The company car is no longer the perk it was. And the debate now is: should I accept the car offered or take additional salary and be reimbursed for using my own car for business?

There are now two main matters considered. The company has to decide if it is happy for you to choose the car you drive on business. You have to decide whether you want to use your money to finance it.