The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is working towards launching its auto enrolment toolkit for basic PAYE tools users this November.
According to TPR’s latest consultation response the toolkit will be in the format of a downloadable Excel spreadsheet that will indicate who should be automatically enrolled into a pension scheme, and provide an employer/employee contribution value, where applicable.
An estimated 200,000 HMRC basic PAYE tools users make up part of the 1.8m small and micro employers reaching their staging dates in the next two years.
According to the regulator, assessing workforce and calculating contributions manually could lead to errors, burden and non-compliance.
At the end of June 2015 the regulator had issued a total of 332 penalties.
Karen Bennett of BrightPay said in a recent blog post that the features and functionality of the AE toolkit will be manual and limited.
“If this AE tool is basic, it will surely add to the stress and frustration of auto enrolment for many employers” she said.
The government-provided tool will not support multiple pay frequencies or variable contribution levels, will use a tax-based pay reference period only, assume that the legal minimum entitlement is being used, will calculate contributions based on banded qualifying earnings only and only support up to 15 workers.
In addition it will only support entitled workers if they are placed in an AE scheme on the same basis as other employees, will not have postponement functionality and will not have the ability to support re-enrolment.
AccountingWEB has launched the No-one gets left behind campaign to alert as many accountants as possible to the obligations implied by auto enrolment. Read our simple eight-point statement which sets out the auto enrolment facts you need to know.