Guides Do I need a troncmaster?
Do I need a troncmaster?
Short answer: no, the Tips Act 2023 does not require one. You can run the split yourself, stay fully compliant, and never appoint anyone. A troncmaster becomes mandatory for exactly one thing: the National Insurance exemption on tips. Here is how to tell which side of that line you are on, and who can hold the role if you need it.
What the law actually requires
The Act requires fair allocation, prompt payment, a written policy, and records. It treats a tronc as one way of meeting the fairness duty, not the way:
“An employer can also choose to allocate and distribute tips fairly and transparently by using a tronc (new section 27F of the 1996 Act). Various tronc arrangements are permitted.”
So a venue where the owner decides the split, publishes the method, pays out on time and keeps the records is compliant with the Act. No troncmaster involved. What that venue cannot do is claim the NI exemption, because the exemption depends on the employer not deciding the allocation. That rule, and the tax mechanics, are covered in the tronc guide.
The three ways venues run tips
All three of these are legitimate places to be:
- Owner-run. You decide the split and sign it off. Compliant with the Act if the other duties are met. Tips go through payroll with NI as normal.
- Troncmaster-run. An independent person decides the allocation. Staff get a split decided by someone whose interests sit with the room rather than the business, which is worth having for trust reasons alone. NI is still paid as normal until the tronc has its own PAYE scheme.
- Troncmaster-run with a separate PAYE scheme. The full arrangement HMRC’s E24 describes: independent allocation plus a tronc PAYE scheme in the troncmaster’s name. This is the configuration the NI exemption attaches to.
Which one suits you depends on what you want. If the NI saving matters at your tips volume, you need the third. If what you want is staff trust in the split, the second already delivers it. If you are a small team where everyone sees everything anyway, the first may be enough.
Is the saving worth it at your volume?
The exemption is 15% employer NI and 8% employee NI on everything that goes through the tronc. Whether that justifies the arrangement depends on your tips volume, so put your own number in:
Indicative, current Class 1 NI rates, voluntary tips. Delivered by a properly constituted tronc with an independent troncmaster.
Who can be the troncmaster
The Code and Acas draw the candidate pool widely:
“An employer may directly appoint a member of staff to be responsible for allocating and distributing tips; and that member of staff can act as an independent tronc operator. An independent tronc operator may also be an external payroll or accountancy firm or alternatively a member of staff elected or agreed upon by the workers. Care is needed to maintain independence.”
“The person who runs a tronc is called a ‘troncmaster’. This can be a worker, an accountant, or an independent company.”
A head waiter, a general manager, any member of staff below director level, an external firm, or a staff committee deciding collectively (HMRC E24 §6, Examples 10 and 11; the committee must not act under the employer’s direction). The people who cannot hold the role, if the NI exemption is the aim, are the employer, a business partner, and any official of the company such as a director (E24 §6). Note the Code’s closing caution: appointing someone is not enough, the independence has to be real. An owner who appoints a troncmaster and then dictates the split has changed nothing.
Two details that catch venues out. A troncmaster who is later promoted to a disqualifying position, made a director for example, needs replacing before the next period is signed. And the day job does not matter: what matters is that they are not an officer of the company and that the decisions are genuinely theirs.
What appointing one changes day to day
The troncmaster decides the allocation method and each period’s split, and signs it off. The employer steps back from those decisions and stays responsible for everything else: passing tips on in full, the payout deadline, the written policy, the records, and a continuing duty under the Code to make sure the tronc is run fairly (Code §31–32). The employer also keeps ordinary employment decisions, such as who works at the venue; HMRC accepts employer influence over who participates, so long as the amounts are the troncmaster’s call (E24 §6, Example 14).
The full set of employer duties is in the Tips Act guide, and the checklist covers the tronc conditions alongside everything else.
Sources
This guide summarises the primary sources below, as in force on 24 August 2026. Quotes are verbatim.