The UK has published statistics on employers taking up the employment allowance for the first six months of the 2015/16 tax year (6 April 2015 to 5 October 2015).
The Employment Allowance was introduced from 2014 and gives up to GBP 2,000 relief from employer’s national insurance contributions. This measure is intended to be an incentive for employers to take on further employees and is available to business, charities, amateur sports clubs. From April 2015 the allowance is also available to domestic employers of care and support workers.
The statistics classify employers as having taken up the Employment Allowance if they have claimed eligibility and have had some amount of the allowance offset against their Class 1 secondary national insurance contributions. They show that in the six months to 5 October 2015 1,170,000 UK employers benefitted from Employment Allowance. The statistics analyze this figure into statistics per sector and per geographic region.
The estimated take-up of the employment allowance in the last tax year (2014/15) was 89%, based on an estimated 1.25 million employers eligible to take up the allowance. The statistics for the first half of 2015/16 do not include an estimate of the take-up of the allowance, owing to uncertainty around estimating the number of employers eligible for the allowance.
