Cairo Forum 2010 Education Site

Archive for March, 2010

If you have been offered a Compromise Agreement to terminate your employment, you must ensure that your solicitor understands how payments will be taxed. Often the agreement can be worded differently to save you money. In this article, Andrew Crisp, an employment law solicitor, explains how it works.

The basic position is that compensation for loss of employment is not taxable up to a maximum of £30,000.00. This includes any redundancy payment.

Any payments due under an employment contract are taxable. This will include salary up to the date of termination, payment for accrued but untaken holiday as well as bonus and commission payments.

But what happens when the Compromise Agreement provides that the employee will receive a sum of money instead of working a notice period? This is known as a Payment in Lieu of Notice (PILON).

If the employee works the notice period, the salary is taxed in the normal way.  Unfortunately, the position is less clear with a PILON. Is it taxable as a payment under the employment contract or is it a tax free compensation payment for loss of employment?

The issue is determined by whether or not there is a clause in the employment contract allowing the employer to make such a payment, known as a PILON clause.
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During the modern age, with globalization at its height, knowing one or two secondary languages has become more than a simple feat of high class and intelligence but also a strict requirement in many occasions. Whether it’s for professional, social or personal reasons, learning at least one foreign language is a must for anyone that wants to keep his or her head up high in today’s society. Let’s take a focused look on 5 of the main reasons that should turn you towards learning a foreign language.

1. Professional Requirement

This is probably the main reason for which one would learn a foreign language. Many professions require the knowledge of at least one or two foreign languages, depending on the field of the job. Most jobs may ask that you know an international language such as English, French, Spanish or German or a business-specific language such as Chinese, Japanese, Russian and so forth. If you’re a native English speaker you may have it a bit easier, since English is the main international language (and one that is present the most often in job descriptions) but knowing a secondary might also prove vital.

2. Social Bonus

Yes, knowing a foreign language (or more) is definitely a social bonus. There’s definitely a steep hill to climb between being presented as someone that doesn’t know any foreign language whatsoever against being presented as a polyglot. Another case when knowing a foreign language can be literally a social blessing is when meeting a foreigner whose language you can speak. They’ll be extremely impressed by your ability to talk with them through their own native tongue, although you’re on home grounds and this fact can single handedly create a great impression around you. If the foreigner happens to be part of a business meeting, this impression can turn to a successful business partnership, bringing you both professional and social satisfactions.

3. Family Communication

It’s often the case where a couple formed out of persons of diverse nationalities understand each other through a commonly known international language such as English. However, they’ll soon want to start learning the other person’s mother tongue, not only for a better communication, but also out of respect for them.

4. Personal Satisfaction

Learning a foreign language is one of the highest intellectual goals that one could have, on a personal scale. Think about a difficult puzzle, or math problem that takes months if not years of constant studying in order to be solved. The process of solving it may be a hard, arduous one but the yell of joy at the end is well worth it. It’s the same case with learning a foreign language: the learning process is not easy and you’ll have many small issues and problems to tackle along the way. You’ll have to focus on various aspects of the problem, such as spelling, grammar, reading, pronunciation and so forth. If you keep the problem in sight however and if you don’t lose interest in it, the chances of solving it are extremely high and the intellectual fulfillment that you get at the end is incomparable to anything else.
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