Selling Holidays back to Employer

mighty magpie

Have a good bit of holidays saved up that I will defintely not use. Our company allow you to sell them back.

Can someone explain the normal way this is done if possible?

So if i have 10 days to sell back, do they

a) give me roughly 1/3 of my monthly salary (10 days / 30 calender days)

b) give me 1/2 of my monthly salary (10 days / 21 business days)

c) calculate my daily pay (salary/252 business days in a year) and multiply by 10 (this should be similar to point (b) i'd reckon

Thanks in advance

Bandana boy

Kind of c except use 260 days in the year (as you are paid for the bank holidays )

Worth noting in ireland they can only buy back days above the statuatory 20 required by law.
illegal for them to buy those days back (unless you are leaving)

mighty magpie

Bandana boy wrote: »

Kind of c except use 260 days in the year (as you are paid for the bank holidays )

Is this business standard?

Do not want to get screwed like (a), if that was the case i'd value my time off much much more.

Bandana boy

That would be pretty standard

I know I had one company that gave you your holidays in hours So taking a Friday used 7 hours holiday while mon-thur was 8 hours. But in the main most companies will use a standard day.

Holiers

There is no standard way of doing it. I have seen all of the above options applied in different companies. The only way to know would be to ask HR or payroll.

bladebrew

It happened in my place last year, it was a 5th week off, they offered it to 3 of us but only 1 of us took it, it was worked out at what we earned per day and added into the months pay,
I would only agree to it if your sure you wont take them though!

Bepolite

If this brings you below the statutory entitlement over a twelve month period, this is illegal.

mighty magpie

I don't think it will bring me below my 20 days. I've got maybe 5 days in lieu this year and i will have taken enough holidays by the 31st of December. I plan to leave end of January so trying to leave with my holiday bank at zero!

My HR/Payroll are an awkward/backward/non-responsive bunch so I thought i'd ask on here first. I'll put in the request stating that I need to know the full ins and outs before i commit!

Bepolite

It wouldn't be an issue for you, just them - but I think I see what you mean now.

mighty magpie

salary/260 days is the convention for us.

Should go a long way on paying for my flight to oz! :-)

tatli_lokma

If you are leaving at the end of January why not just let them pay you out for your unused leave then? Much simpler.

Also days in lieu cannot be counted towards your annual leave - so the point still stands that you can only cash out unused days above the legal minimum of 20. But since you are leaving it is not so much of an issue as they would have to pay you out for the unused leave anyway.

I would be sure to take my time in lieu before the end of the year if I were you because there is no obligation on a company to pay you out for that when you leave so if you don't take them you could very well loose them.

mighty magpie

tatli_lokma wrote: »

If you are leaving at the end of January why not just let them pay you out for your unused leave then? Much simpler.

Lack of trust on things being done correctly.

tatli_lokma

But if they can't be trusted when you leave, why would they be any better prior to that? And also, by waiting until you leave, you have a legal entitlement to be paid out so if there is a problem you can make a claim to NERA (or threaten them with doing so) if need be. If it all goes pear shaped before you leave and you feel you were underpaid for the holidays there is nothing much you can do as while you still work there there is no obligation on them to pay you out for your holidays.

Either way they will have to pay you out some holidays when you leave as even if it is only a few hours you will have accrued more leave by your departure date, so its not like you can avoid that happening and if they are that inept it will happen one way or another.

Mrs OBumble

Unless you're earning less than about 18k per year, (which I very much doubt if you've got extra holidays to sell back), then tax-wise you're a lot better to have the holidays paid out in the next financial year. Remember your first 18-ish thousand each year is virtually tax free, while anything over 35k is taxdd at well over 42% when you put the levies etc in.

tatli_lokma

This is a good point also! Especially since you are leaving the country. You will actually get more value for the holidays in January than you will now.

mighty magpie

UK based company so will still be in the same tax year! Thanks for all the advice!

tatli_lokma

Are you in the UK, or the company is UK based? Because if it is a UK based company but you are employed and paid in Ireland then the Irish tax year applies.

mighty magpie

Yeah UK for both!