Given holiday pay with no notice..

brianna6172

Opened my payslip today to find my employer had out through 41.5 hours holiday pay and 8.5 basic for the one day I had worked. I am only ever paid for a 39 hour week, the rest goes to time in lieu. They gave me no notice of this and did not offer any days off to me to use them up.. My tax I had to pay this week doubled due to this.

I called work immediately and they said they decided to do it to use up 2016's holidays... Can they do this without consulting me or offering an alternative??

TIA

Reati

brianna6172 wrote: »

Opened my payslip today to find my employer had out through 41.5 hours holiday pay and 8.5 basic for the one day I had worked. I am only ever paid for a 39 hour week, the rest goes to time in lieu. They gave me no notice of this and did not offer any days off to me to use them up.. My tax I had to pay this week doubled due to this.

I called work immediately and they said they decided to do it to use up 2016's holidays... Can they do this without consulting me or offering an alternative??

TIA

Short answer, yes. Longer answer involves understanding their policy on carry over of leave days.

callaway92

You had to pay tax on those holidays that you were paid for?

Sickening, but understandable if you went over your maximum days to carry over to 2017.

Irish_Elect_Eng

Companies pay off holidays at the turn of the year for two reasons:

(1) To Encourage employees to actually take their holidays, because getting paid for them is a poor alternative to time off and they have a responsibility to keep you stress free by letting you take your breaks.

(2) To avoid accruing a large balance on their accounts. Holidays owed is accounted for as a debt to the company and they want to keep it in check as people have a habit of inflating the accrual by hoarding days.

If you take all your holidays in 2017, their policy will have been successful.

But do check your employee handbook/contract for details of your holiday rules.

cml387

I was under the impression that EU working time directives made it illegal to substitute payment for holidays?

Mrs OBumble

Why didn't you use your holidays in 2016?

Thinking some more: You usually work 39 hours in a week, but this time you worked only 8.5 hours. So you should have received holiday pay for at least 30.5 hours unless you were off sick, in which case it should be optional.

Realistically a leave balance of 41 hours is over a year's worth of annual leave. I know some of it is from TOIL - but even so a whole week is high.

Re tax: you will pay the same amount of tax, no matter whether your are paid out for the hours now or later.

Rachiee

Have they changed your leave policy/ toil policy or were you just not fully aware of it?
I can see why you would be annoyed it would have been nice to have told you to use em or lose em (problem with that being if they were too busy short staffed to let you use the toil).
You could look for support with the union re: change in accepted work practice or terms and conditions of employment doubt you'd get very far though and the damage is already done.

infogiver

brianna6172 wrote: »

Opened my payslip today to find my employer had out through 41.5 hours holiday pay and 8.5 basic for the one day I had worked. I am only ever paid for a 39 hour week, the rest goes to time in lieu. They gave me no notice of this and did not offer any days off to me to use them up.. My tax I had to pay this week doubled due to this.

I called work immediately and they said they decided to do it to use up 2016's holidays... Can they do this without consulting me or offering an alternative??

TIA

If you want to carry over leave from one year into the next this has to be pre arranged with your employer and the employer is not obliged to facilitate you in this regard.
Now that employees are accruing holidays while out sick this is going to become an issue.

AlanG

The tax will be high this week / month but it will balance out over the year and you will only end up paying the same tax as normal. if you want to be sure ask revenue for a balancing statement at year end.