Hi, Can anyone please advise...
Myself and my colleague are both pregnant and are having to take voluntary redundancy in February after the 90 days consultation due to the fact that we will not be guaranteed part time jobs when we return after our maternity.
So, we've just had our meeting with HR to "finalise" things and they were hopeless.
We are entitled to our redundancy package and a month in leiu, this is all fine, no dispute there
The company have agreed that due to the fact we are in the qualifing period they will have to pay us SMP BUT.... they want to pay it in a lump sum in February.
Now our issue is that this will be heavily taxed and as it will be in this financial year, it will be calculated with this years earnings and we will not be able to claim the tax back.
We spoke to the statutory dispute line who said paying SMP in a lump sum is frowned upon due to the tax implications and that the tax office did not like this to happen for exactly the reasons I have stated.
Also they will pay in a lump sum and then what If we want or even need to go back to a part time job after 6 months, As first time mums we don't know how we will feel....
The company is saying that by paying us SMP monthly would mean that we are still employed by the company until our SMP runs out, therefore would not pay us our redunancy payment until the SMP finishes, ie December 2010 and they say we would then have accrued more leave and technically more redundancy pay...ARGH.!!!
All we would like is for our redundancy to be paid in February and either our SMP monthly or paid in a lump sum in the new tax year in April. Why should we pay the tax when we probably won't get it back??
Can anyone help??
Thanks
Carol