Smaller firms may be pleased to learn that the government is considering giving them more time to get ready for automatically enrolling their employees in pension schemes.

The Pensions Regulator last week issued guidance for employers that says smaller firms sharing PAYE schemes with other like businesses will see their staging dates deferred by up to 23 months.

The new alterations are expected to be written into legislation prior to the Pensions Bill becoming law and will cover firms with less than 10 employees who are included in a larger PAYE scheme which has in excess of 239 members.

A business fitting the above description would have until the first of January 2016 to implement auto-enrolment.

The Pensions Regulator has also launched some interactive tools to explain the new regulations. As from October next year, employers and recruitment businesses will be required to auto-enrol workers after they have completed 12 weeks service. Employees then have the option of opting out if they do not want to participate in the scheme their employer has chosen. This new duty is to be phased in over several years, starting with larger organisations.

The interactive tools will help businesses establish their staging date, help them understand which employees need to be enrolled and how to enrol them, and what level of contribution is required for each eligible employee.

The REC still has concerns that auto-enrolment will create challenges for recruiters due to high levels of turnover amongst temps and the expectation that a lot of agency workers will opt-out of the pension scheme they have been enrolled in.

© 2011 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: Bokeh-licious by VinothChandar

HMRC is in hot water yet again; this time over data showing that over 9 million National Insurance contributions dating back as far as 2004–05 have not been added to employees’ records.

The total monetary value of these unmatched contributions is in excess of £1.2 billion.

Ian Liddell-Grainger, the MP who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Taxation, warned taxpayers that their pensions might be affected if HMRC does not resolve this backlog.

The problem stems from mistakes on the P14 forms that employers submit to HMRC every May. These forms log the NI and PAYE contributions for individual employees. If the Revenue finds an error, it is supposed to contact the employer in order to obtain the correct information. However, it appears that administrative corners were cut and this did not happen.

The MP said that taxpayers with unmatched NICs may need to find their old payslips or ask their employer to verify the contributions paid.

In order to qualify for a full state pension, individuals have to have paid contributions for a minimum of 30 years.

Employers have reacted angrily to suggestions that they are to blame for this situation. Phil McCabe from the FPB pointed out that HMRC has a track record of poor levels of efficiency and administration and the tax system needs simplification.

HMRC has fought back at the media coverage by posting a notice on its website saying that the department has not lost the contributions. Unmatched contributions are placed in a suspense account until they can be correctly allocated.

A spokesman for the Revenue explained that they write to individuals if they see a gap in contributions and respond to the situation immediately if someone reports a gap. It is simply not true that millions of people will lose their correct pension entitlement.

© 2010 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: Brotin by Sara Björk

Do you ever get the feeling you don’t really understand what’s going on? Reading the news over the last week, I kept getting this horrible feeling that I was in an episode of Reggie Perrin.

Perhaps I’m working too hard, but if we’re trying to save as much money from the public purse as we can, why are we promising to give everyone the maximum pension possible? Why is the Mayor of London up in arms about ethnic cleansing in Streatham? And why will I have to take money out of my company to provide a pension fund for my staff – of whom there is precisely one – when the money that I deliberately leave in the company is meant to be to help fund my pension…?

The world really has gone slightly mad.

There have been flashes of sanity though. The Institute of Directors has written to the new Office of Tax Simplification pointing out that there is a tax measure they really need to look at. One that causes great confusion, that is counter-productive and actually costs money to implement since almost all attempts to charge it result in failure. You might have heard of it; it’s called IR35…

Errm, hullo, IOD? Aren’t you about 10 years late? Some of us – about 20,000 to be precise – have been beating that drum for quite a long time. Now, finally, it’s on the agenda for reassessment and, dare we hope, possible abolition, and the IOD have realised it’s a bad thing. Keep up at the back, chaps.

Actually what I thought was quite amusing was that they used the same arguments and most of the same statistics that PCG have been generating over the years. So perhaps there was a grain of truth in what we’ve been saying all along.

We’ve also been saying things about abuse of the visa system and the importing of non-EU workers to undercut the local variety, many of whom are now out of work. So it was with a degree of amusement that I read a survey has shown that a quarter of Tier 1 visa holders are working in non-skilled jobs.

Say what? Tier 1 are the people who can stand on their own two feet, who will make a positive contribution to the country and who, after two years, are supposed to be earning at least £35k a year to keep the visa. Granted people can work for whoever they want, at whatever they want, but if being a supermarket cashier is the height of your ambition, you really do have to wonder why they came in the first place.

I also read that someone in government has had a bit of an inspiration. When discussing the proposed cap on immigration and its reputedly monstrous impact on some companies’ ability to bring in staff, it was suggested that perhaps using up the ones they had applied for might be a way out of their dilemma.

And I’m sorry, but I still refuse to take St Vincent of Cable seriously.

Still, some things brought a smile to these grumpy old lips. The better than expected growth figures and the retention of our AAA rating prove that some think we’re going about things the right way. The Coalition’s spending review contained a lot of solid common sense, something politics has been lacking for quite a while (about 13 years, to be precise) although I still don’t quite get that thing about non-aircraft carriers. And I loved Osborne’s parting shot when announcing the programme, that the total cuts added up to 19% of government spending, which is precisely one percent less than the 20% that Labour had said was the most we could afford and what they would have done had they been in power.

So a confusing week in some ways, but not a bad one, all things considered.

Alan Watts can found at LinkedIn.
© 2010 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: Remember to Smile by ponc?opengu?n

One expert is advising women to make financial provision for their own retirement rather than depending on their partner for support.

Tony McPhail, from Hargreaves Lansdown, says that women should have an extra incentive to save money for their retirement as they are more likely to suffer financial hardship in old age.

Women tend to live longer than men and because many women take career breaks to have children, they end up with less retirement savings rights. Add to that the fact that husbands often save in a pension scheme that dies with them, leaving the widow without an income, and it is easy to see why women need to take more of a forward thinking approach to retirement.

McPhail made his comments after a survey by Prudential revealed that more than 1 in 4 employed women (28%) aged 40 and above plan to survive on their husband’s pension after they’ve left work.

However, there is growing concern that the majority of people will not have saved anywhere near enough money during their employment to enable them to enjoy their retirement. A recent survey from Aviva found that every adult will need to save on average £10,300 a year in order to retire comfortably.

The senior policy adviser for the National Association of Pension Funds, James Walsh, said that we are facing a pensions crisis in the UK and the sooner people start planning for their retirement, the better. In fact the UK is in the unenviable position of having the largest per person pensions gap in all of Europe, followed by Germany, the Republic of Ireland, France, Spain and Russia.

© 2010 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Image: Use of money during emergency conditions and savings by Tilemahos Efthimiadis