With our first pension auto enrolment clients staging date approaching I was looking at what effect the decisions an employer can make can have.
All employers will have a staging date and all employers will be able to defer the date of auto enrolment by up to three months from that date.
So what happens if the employer chooses not to defer auto enrolment?
For example, an employer has a staging date of 1st October 2015 and pays staff monthly on the 26th of each month. Would he auto enrol from 1st October? Or his next payroll date? Or some other date?
In this case it is the final option, ‘some other date’. The staging date is 1st October which falls within the Pay Reference Period that ends on the 5th of October (tax months). The payroll run that relates to that period was the one on the 26th September. So the employer will need to auto enrol qualifying employees into the pension scheme at that date, before they have reached their staging date!
Don’t get caught out, know your staging date and know what you are going to do when you reach it.
Barry Sims