Automatic enrolment and what it means for you.

Wednesday May 10, 2017

As usual there is a lot going on when you are running a business, and this is another ‘thing’ to put on the list if you are employing staff.

All companies that have a registered PAYE scheme will be contacted by the pension’s regulator advising that they will be required to offer a pension scheme to their employees.  However if the only employees of the company are directors you will not be required to set up a scheme although you must advise the pension’s regulator of this and if you take any employees in the future a scheme would be required.

All company owners will receive a letter from The Pensions Regulator which will give details of your staging date, and this is the deadline date when you will need to have either  advised the pension’s regulator that you are not employing staff or set up an automatic enrolment compliant pension scheme– and here at RIFT Accounting we are happy to help.

As a Director of a limited company, we would recommend in the first place that you speak with an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA), and to save you time, you don’t need to go looking around to find one, we have contacts that we are happy to introduce you to.

There can be benefits to paying your pension contributions through your limited company, but that’s not for us to advise, that’s for you to talk to an IFA about in the first instance.
With regards to your employees, we have a partnership in place with a selected provider for automatic enrolment pensions and we are happy to help with this.

So, who must you put into a pension scheme?

Employees who must be put into a pension scheme that you contribute to regularly will be;

• Aged between 22 and state pension age
• Earn more than £10,000 per year

There are also employees who can ask to join a pension scheme and you would need to make regular payments, these people are;

• Aged between 16 and 74
• Earn more than £5824 per year

There are also employees who can ask to join a pension scheme that you provide, but you do not have to make any contributions into their pension pots, these people are;

• Aged between 16 and 74
• Earn less than £5824 per year.

There are some exceptions which could apply to any of the above categories which include somebody who has resigned, has been dismissed or is retiring, as well as an individual who has left an automatic enrolment scheme in the last 12 months, but we would go through the restrictions with you when you start the process.

So how much do you need to pay into your employee pension pots?

• You need to pay at least 1% of your employee’s earnings that fall between £5824 and £42385 per year. These payments are known as ‘contributions’ and are set annually.
• You can choose to pay a higher amount but this is your choice and is not mandatory.
• The minimum contributions are as follows and are increasing each year.
  
  

This could have a significant impact on your payroll going forward and needs to be something to be considered when employing staff and agreeing salaries.

This is purely an overview of your obligations – but don’t worry we can talk you through the various stages which will impact you and your business.