Every employer with at least one member of staff now has new duties, including enrolling those who are eligible into a workplace pension scheme and contributing towards it. This is called automatic enrolment.
You need to take steps to make sure your eligible staff are enrolled into a pension scheme. If you already pay contributions into a pension scheme for your staff, you will need to check if it is suitable for automatic enrolment.
Ideally, you should allow up to 12 months to prepare. Remember, automatic enrolment is your legal duty and if you don’t act you could be fined.
Know your staging date
The date your automatic enrolment duties start is called your staging date and is when the law comes into effect for you.
If you don’t know your staging date, we can find it using your PAYE reference. If you don’t pay your staff through a PAYE scheme, your staging date will be 1 April 2017.
When the pensions regulator writes, you need to confirm the most senior person or business owner as the ‘primary contact’.
FP Business Services Ltd can help you to carry out the day-to-day tasks of managing automatic enrolment, you can nominate us as a ‘secondary contact’.
Who do you need to enroll?
All your staff must be assessed for automatic enrolment based on their age and how much they earn. Further information is available at
Latest news issued from HMRC for residents living in Scotland
The Scottish rate of Income Tax will come into effect from 6 April 2016. On 2 December 2015, HMRC will start to contact customers living in Scotland where records show that this is their main address, to inform them they have been identified as being a Scottish taxpayer.
Scottish taxpayers will have a tax code prefixed by an ‘S’. Scottish tax codes will be issued as part of the annual coding routines to employers, so the correct rate of income tax can be deducted based on each individual’s taxpayer status.
If any of your employees live in Scotlandyou will be sent the ‘S’ Tax code in the annual coding run.
You must ensure that your payroll software is up to date and able to apply the new ‘S’ codes.
You will need to apply the new ‘S’ tax code to all employees identified as being a Scottish taxpayereven if the rates of Income Tax in Scotland remain the same as the rest of the UK.
There will be no change to the way you report or make payments for income tax to HMRC, other than applying the ‘S’ tax code to Scottish taxpayer employees.
You do not need to take any action to identify whether any of your employees are Scottish taxpayers, as this will be done by HMRC using the address information held on record.
Please tell HMRC if your address changes, to enable them to correctly identify any Scottish taxpayers and ensure they pay the right amount of tax.
The tax tables will be updated on GOV.UK in February 2016 to show the Scottish rates of Income Tax for basic, additional and higher rate taxpayers.
Whilst businesses can often easily adapt their core model in response to changing demands or events it is more challenging to know when they might need to significantly transform their original model. Changing your business model can breathe new life into your business and shows that you are responding to customer needs and demands.
Signals that tell you when you need to change your own model
We came across this article recently on the Strategizer website which offers an insight into things to watch out for that signal a need for a change in business model or value proposition. The article describes 6 key situations that may indicate a need to take a more radical approach to your model:
1. You don’t generate enough traction from the customer you targeted
2. Your value proposition doesn’t resonate with customers
3. Your acquisition & retention strategy doesn’t generate the growth you hoped for
4. Customers are not willing to pay the price
5. You can’t build the product and/or your costs are too high
6. External forces are threatening your business model
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
