Comment on Chippie owner given ‘devastating’ £40,000 fine by Home office for allegedly illegal hire
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
When the man was hired in early 2023, he provided the chippie with a national insurance number, proof of student loan payments and housing benefit receipts from the local council. He also provided a photocopy of his British passport and was paid via pay as you earn (PAYE) through HMRC.
Shouldn’t they fine the illegal in that case? It sounds like the business took appropriate measures.
Granted, you can check if a passport is authentic using your phone (as passports have RFID chips which contain digitally signed data that your phone can read) but I wouldn’t expect an old bloke to know how to do that
That’s why businesses insist on seeing your actual passport. Not a picture of it.
I can give you a picture of anything, that’s been true for years even before the rise of image generation AI. I once had to mail my passport via recorded courier to a company in London in order to apply for a job in Leeds. Hell of a pain but necessary.
I had a job and they only wanted a picture scan of it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah this was for a pretty secure job where you had to be a citizen in order to be eligible, so they would been a bit oversensitive with the passport, but really every business should see the physical passport because I could send them anything.
It’s easy enough to fake a picture of a passport but much harder to fake the actual passport. If someone’s coming into the business on their first day just have them bring the passport with them on that day. The only reason I had to mail my passport was because I was going to work in a remote office.
frazorth@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
There is the point where if the person had valid identification, and National Insurance, and was paid via HMRC, that the onus should be on notifying the business of a change of status. Whether that’s the student or HMRC I don’t know. They would notify the business on a change of required tax.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
Yeah, I feel HMRC should have done something other than wait two years before going “actually no, pay us a fine”.