Your Payroll Questions Answered - Sick Pay

Q. We have had an employee who is on long term sick. As a business, we provide employees with company sick pay for a period of 2 weeks per year.  Do I pay statutory sick pay at the same time? A. The employee’s Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) can be offset against the employee’s Company Sick Pay (COSSP), so that both the SSP and COSSP equal the employee’s daily rate.  It is recommended on the payslip both SSP and COSSP are displayed separately: Example: Salary                           £1000 Salary Adjustment         -£100 SSP                             £86.70 COSSP                         £13.30 Total                            £1000 The SSP scheme starts on day 1 of sickness, so the first 3 days will be classed as waiting days (even though COSSP is being received for these days) and on the 4th day of sickness, the SSP can start to be offset against the COSSP. The SSP entitlement will run from 28 days from the 4th day of sickness, which is the first day in which SSP has been paid from. Q. I have been told by a friend that you can recover statutory sick pay; how would I do this? A. You will be able to recover SSP using the Percentage Threshold Scheme (PTS).  To calculate whether you are entitled to the reclaim, you will need the following information:

• A total figure of SSP paid to employees in the tax month for which you wish to recover SSP.
• The total amount of gross class 1 National Insurance Contributions for all employees that you paid in the tax month (employee’s and employer’s)

You can only recover SSP that you’ve paid in the tax month that’s greater than 13% of your NIC liability for that month. The formula needed to work out the recoverable SSP is: 13% Total NIC - SSP paid = Recoverable SSP amount. Q.  How can you recover SSP from a previous tax year? A. You can complete form SP32 (which is found on HMRC website) and send to the form to HMRC. Q. I have an employee who will be going on sick leave from 12th December to the end of December. Do I pay her holiday pay for the Christmas period (25th & 26th December)? A. If the employee is sick on either side of a Bank Holiday and the Bank Holiday is a qualifying day, then the normal process would be to process the Bank Holidays as 2 days’ sickness. The Bank Holiday that has not been taken will be transferred back in to the employee’s holiday entitlement. If the employee, however, requests to take the 2 days as holiday, no SSP will be paid on the 2 days.  SSP and holiday pay cannot be paid at the same time. Clients can reach this service by dialling 0844 892 2772, and choosing option 3. This service is available from Monday - Friday between 9am and 5.45pm.