Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Are we nearly there yet?

13th Jan 2014
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Just as you were getting to grips with RTI, here comes Auto Enrolment – just a little reminder….

As you are all aware, auto enrolment has already begun, although unless you deal with very large clients it might not yet have come home to roost…..

Auto enrolment is being phased in with various ‘staging dates’ running through to 1 February 2018. The first staging date was 1 October 2012 and applied to the largest employers.  (120,000+ employees)

From the beginning of next month all employers with a PAYE scheme membership of at least 250 need to begin operating auto-enrolment.

Schemes of 50 to 249 will begin auto enrolment from 1 April 2014 continuing up to 1 April 2015.

The smallest employers (defined as those with a PAYE scheme membership of fewer than 50 employees) will not be required to start auto-enrolment until June 2015.

The main point to note here is that the staging date is based on the number of employees notified to the regulator by HMRC at 1 April 2012 - changes to the number of employees since then do not affect the staging date.

In theory there is nothing to prevent employers beginning auto-enrolment earlier than the official staging date, although in practice it is hard to see why they would, given that it would bring forward the need to make contributions.

There are potential financial penalties of up to £10,000 a day for employers who fail to implement auto enrolment and additional penalties for those who encourage employees to opt out, for example by recruiting only those who agree to opt out immediately their employment begins.

Should we all be panicking...? quite possibly, knowing from personal experience what some payroll clients are like.  Here is a little something to be thinking about:

  1. Do you know the size of all your payroll clients and their staging dates
  2. Do you know if they have set things in motion to select a suitable pension scheme?
  3.  Will your payroll software assist you in assessing the work force, produce files for various pension companies and keep track of the various deadlines?  (Keytime is releasing their Auto-enrolment upgrade shortly)
  4. Do you understand the rules?
  5. How will the pension scheme be managed day to day?  Will it be you or the client that does this?

Here’s a couple of links to peruse and make you wish you’d chosen a career in market gardening:

Are you ready?
We are Keytime. We've been developing tools for accountants for over 20 years, and we believe we sell the best value software on the market today. For more information visit www.keytime.co.uk
Tags:

You might also be interested in

Replies (0)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

There are currently no replies, be the first to post a reply.