We act for a number of husband and wife companies who either receive the usual £700-£800 per month salaries or one of them nothing if they work elsewhere as well. There are no employment contracts in place and therefore in these circumstances can they simply inform the pensions regulator that there is no auto enrolment requirement and no requirement for pension contributions to be paid? In a very few number of cases one spouse is the director with the other spouse being the company secretary. In this situation does auto enrolment apply to both of them? Should the client want to avoid this issue they could simply make both parties directors?
Thanks
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Three short answers
Yes - assuming that by "husband and wife companies", you mean that both are directors and that there are no other employees.No, to neither of them, as a company secretary is considered to be an office holder like a director, rather than being a "worker" subject to AE.They could.
Others may provide links to the many other threads where the same point has been covered recently.
Is there an online method of advising pensions regulator of "exempt" / Not required schemes.
Am I right in thinking "NEST" is the way to setup online communication in a similar way we register as Agents / Clients on HMRC Gateway system for Tax references
Not yet
Is there an online method of advising pensions regulator of "exempt" / Not required schemes.
Currently, TPR's advice is to send an e-mail to TPR, everyone of which will have to be read and processed manually to record that AE does not apply to the PAYE reference. That may be adequate in the first quarter of 2015 when only 3,400 employers were due to stage, most of which would need to set up AE pension scheme. However, 110,000 employers are due to stage in the first quarter of 2016 and 215,000 in the first quarter of 2017, many of which will be exempted from AE. If TPR has not set up an online facility to notify exemption by the end of 2015, it will go into meltdown.
Here you go
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/anyanswers/question/auto-enrolment-solut...
My colleague has done this a few times now and it's worked fine.
Autoenrolment
If you are an employer you will be receiving a letter from The Pension Regulator advising you of your pension staging date for your automatic enrolment legal duties.
The position regarding Director only business and Automatic Enrolment
When you receive the letter from the Pension Regulator you will need to supply the following information to confirm to The Pensions Regulator that there are only directors in the company, none of whom are workers for the purposes of automatic enrolment and to send an email to the Pension Regulator stating the following:
1. I confirm that [company name] is a not an employer for the purposes of automatic enrolment for the following reason – (select one option from the list below):
a) there is only one director and there are no other staff working for the company
b) the only people working for the company are directors and none of them has an employment contract
c) the only people working for the company are directors and only one of them has an employment contract
d) the company has ceased trading (including date ceased)
e) (if there is some other reason why you believe you do not have any automatic enrolment duties, please provide a brief explanation)
2. The letter code for the company is: [The letter code is a 10 digit number which can be found on all letters sent from The Pensions Regulator]
3. The PAYE scheme(s) reference is:
4. The companies house number (where applicable):
5. The name, email address, address and telephone number of contact at the company.
If the company’s circumstances change so that there are at least two people working for the company under contracts of employment (whether directors or other staff) then you will need to inform us of this as soon as possible.