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No need for some companies to auto enrol
A company with no eligible employees does not need to set up an auto enrolment pension scheme. How does the Pension Regulator know whether a company falls into this category? Somehow, the company has to advise them and request that the records are updated appropriately. All the information being issued is about how to auto enrol, nothing about how to do the right thing to avoid penalties when a company doesn't need to auto enrol.
The answer, eventually tracked down via their helpline, is to send an email to the general enquiries address and hope that it actually gets recognised and somehow flagged on the various systems.
Emailing that address triggers an auto response promising a proper response within 5 - 10 days, so this needs to be tracked to ensure it happens.
I strongly suspect that a lot of penalies will be incorrectly issued when this manual approach fails.
"A company with no eligible
"A company with no eligible employees does not need to set up an auto enrolment pension scheme"
Is this 100% correct?
As I read it, all employers have to set up a pension scheme regardless as to whether they have any eligible employees or not, just in case (I have tried to find the answer to this but have failed miserably) or have I misunderstood and you are talking about sole Directors with no employees?.
Most of our small businesses only employ part time employees and I would say none of them will want to join a scheme as they don't earn enough.
It would be a big help to us if these businesses were also exempt as who is going to want to waste time setting up these schemes and pay set up costs when the schemes are going to lie dormant and they know they are never going to use them?, It would make more sense to have a tick box at the top of TPR Declaration for these businesses to say that they have no eligible employees and are therefore exempt (is this too much to ask?????).
Is this just going to encourage small businesses (which after all are the backbone of this country!) to not take on full time employees or even close down rather than shoulder even more expense that they can ill afford?.
I think there are still too many questions that we can't find the answers to regarding Auto Enrolment for small businesses.
I thought TPTB were supposed to be cutting red tape so that employers could get on with running their businesses, all they seem to do is cut HMRC departments so that they can pass even more work and stress onto us for no or very little reward.
Writing's possible but hardly cost or time effective when you need to get proof of posting to have a defence against penalties.
It's remarkably poor process to set up a system which doesn't apply to 100% of potential targets, and not include an efficient means of opting out. Equally it's poor process to issue voluminous documentation which lacks the opt out information. It doesn't take a great deal of thought to realise that processes should be adequate for all major target groups, and there are over half a million companies which don't need to autoenrol.
We keep hearing how overworked various bureaucratic organisations are, and in this we're seeing an example of why that is so and should not be so. This poor process guarantees that there will be significant cost in dealing with companies which are incorrectly penalised.