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Introduction

The national minimum wage (NMW) has been around since 1998, with NMW policy being the responsibility of the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) (before October 2023 it was the responsibility of the Department of Energy & Industrial Strategy or ‘DBEIS’). The equivalent to NMW for the those over 21 years of age (or for over 23, if looking at the picture before 1 April 2024) is the national living wage (NLW). However, in practice, there is just one set of rules. The remainder of this guidance note will therefore refer to these obligations simply as NMW.

In March 2021, the DBEIS (with responsibility subsequently taken over by the DBT, see above) published an online version of its manual: Calculating the minimum wage. Although this is the primary guidance material, day-to-day responsibility for policing the system falls upon HMRC rather than the DBT, and further guidance may be obtained from the HMRC national minimum wage manual ― see NMWM01000 onwards.

With its increasingly