A client had no employees on its staging date of 1 April 2016 and the PAYE scheme was closed. I called up The Pension Regulator (TPR) and they marked the scheme as exempt.
A new PAYE scheme was set up in February 2017 and an auto-enrolment scheme and the first date for contributions was 28 February.
I just called TPR about the declaration of compliance and they said that this had to be completed within 24 hours of the scheme becoming active (i.e., after making the first contribution). I can't find any guidance on this but I have completed the declaration of compliance today (it was not possible to complete it before the first contribution since the scheme was not yet active so I only had one day!). I hope my client does not suffer penalties.
Anyone else come across this?
Replies (4)
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Eh?
The staging date for a new employer setting up a PAYE scheme in February 2017 would normally be 1st January 2018. Are you saying that the old PAYE scheme was resurrected, rather than a new one created, and hence, the staging date was the original 1st April 2016, meaning that you had to set up a scheme immediately on taking on qualifying employees?
News to me. I'm sure somebody on here said that you just had to submit a DoC at the staging date.
So far, it's not a situation I've needed to deal with.
"Immediate" is a bit over the top. Although I dare say it could be done easily enough.
I have a case where I believe that the directors (being the only people paid salaries) made a "no workers" declaration to the PR.
Circumstances later changed (ie. started paying salaries to workers).
After much to/fro communications with the PR a new later than original staging date (ie. 1st October 2017) was established - so declaration of compliance deadline will be early in 2018 (not within 24 hours of starting to pay salaries to workers).
At one stage PR denied that a staging date could be changed, eventual outcome proved this assertion to be incorrect.