How is maternity pay calculated?

[Uwila]

I have just recieved an e-mail from Hr saying my maternity pay was overpaid because when they calulted my usual earnings from before maternity pay, they erroneously included the amount I pay out pre-tax to an employee stock purchase program. They say maternity bay is based oin "NIable pay". Is this true? If my pay has pre-tax deduction are they not part of my usual pay on which maternity pay is based?

Help!

calulted=calculated

ACAS are usually good at for this sort of thing \link{www.acas.co.uk\ACAS)

Oh.... doesn't anyone know about pre-tax contributions??

I just tried the link, endedup on an inland revenue smp calculator, and after answering many questions ended up with a technical error.... ugh!

bump

I would have thought .. but don't know for certain .. that you are still entitled to ALL benefits .. hence I kept my company car and private health and pension contributions whilst on maternity leave

I think that it is your gross salary that should be used

but personally I'd ask company HR department to forward the legislation they are referring to .. isn't it up to them to prove it to you rather than you to disprove it

and again... bump.

Oh come on. Mumsnet knows everything. How is the 90% of pay calculated? Is a pretax employee stock purchase plan exempt from the equation?

PLEASE are there any payroll experts out there?

I have a nasty feeling they may be right - that's certainly the case with the childcare vouchers, which are non tax/NI-able, which you are warned to stop having during the SMP qualifying period because of the implications for SMP. A bit trickier for you if this is a SAYE scheme as you are presumably committed to doing it for a longer period.

have asked my sis to check out thread - not sure she'd call herself a payroll expert but has always come to my rescue in these areas.

I think it depends on the company and their maternity policy, you might have to check the small print. (I was very lucky with my mat pay as it was based on a week when I'd had a bonus paid and therefore was considerably more than my usual salary )

Well, I had to concede the point about the stock plan -- it was not to be part of the gross pay calsulation. But I did reduce what I owe them whe I pointed out my July raise. So, basically we me about halfway.

I'll live with it...