October 23, 2015
Multi office occupiers in the City of London could face millions more in taxes 0
Multi office occupiers in the City of London could face an additional tax bill of an estimated £720million thanks to the recent Woolway v Mazars Supreme Court decision, which could allow the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) to assess business rates on a floor by floor rather than the entire area a company occupies, Cluttons has warned. Currently the VOA applies an allowance, or discount in layman’s terms, on substantial accommodation occupied over several floors in a building, subject to the size and specification of areas occupied. Within the Square Mile allowances starts from 70,000 sq ft for Grade A office space, 50,000 sq ft for Grade B and 21,000 sq ft for basic or poor accommodation. However, the Supreme Court’s decision, which contradicts previous case law and the VOA’s current policy, could mean businesses may lose any size allowance on their existing rating assessments.
October 21, 2015
Far fewer working women than men receive an annual bonus 0
by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace
Nearly three quarters of the UK’s working women don’t receive any form of annual bonus. Glassdoor’s latest UK Employment Confidence Survey found that only 29 percent of women at work receive a bonus, compared to 44 percent of men, which presumably is one reason why 44 percent of men remain positive about the outlook for their employer as opposed to just one in three women. The survey, which is carried out twice a year, also found that over the last six months, nearly half of all businesses in the UK that had made negative changes in the workplace (49 percent) had made employees redundant/and or communicated plans to implement further redundancies. The result is that nearly a third of employees (32 percent) are concerned that they will be made redundant over the next six months, up from 21 percent from the beginning of last year.
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