Payroll matters
Calculating & reporting pay, tax & pensions
payroll and pensions

Payroll

If you have someone working for you, you'll need to ensure they're paid correctly - and that tax, National Insurance and pensions contributions are all taken care of.

Most employers agree that good payroll and pension management is essential for good people management. It can sometimes seem daunting to keep up with the constant changes in legislation, tax and pensions; Whitehill can offer a comprehensive service to ensure you don't need to keep up with it all.

Payroll

Anyone who has someone working for them has legal obligations as a result.

HMRC gives more details, but in brief you'll need to;

  • Set up and keep records for each employee, including name, address, earnings, deductions, net pay and employer's National Insurance Contributions.
  • Make deductions for tax and employee's National Insurance based on tax codes, paying net pay to the employee and the deductions to HMRC along with employer's National Insurance Contributions.
  • Submit pay and deductions information in real time to HMRC
  • Issue appropriate pay slips to employees when they are paid
  • Make sure year end submissions are made correctly and in time.
  • When an employee leaves, or joins, processing and issuing the appropriate forms to the employee and to HMRC.

Our payroll service is a cost-effective way of ensuring all this is done on time, and that any issues with HMRC or employees themselves can be quickly sorted out. 

We'll collect information on monthly salary, or hours worked, pay rates, deductions, and other payroll-related data from you.  We use that information to calculate the amounts due, and then generate pay slips, payroll reports, and file NI and PAYE tax returns with HMRC.  We'll maintain records and ensure you comply with the Real Time Information (RTI) requirements of HMRC.

We can liaise directly with HMRC on your behalf to ensure deductions for Employer and Employee National Insurance and PAYE income tax are made correctly, and we'll return information to HMRC for you. We'll advise you on the net amounts to pay to the employee and to HMRC.

We'll also manage the tax year end, when summaries and forms need to be completed and issued, and deal with staff who leave for whatever reason.  All this for a fixed monthly fee - and no unpleasant surprises.

Just provide the basic information - employee and salary - and we'll do the rest.

Pensions and Auto Enrolment

Under the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the UK must put certain staff into a pension scheme and contribute towards it. This is called ‘automatic enrolment’.

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Whatever your business, if you employ at least one person you're an employer and you have certain legal duties to get people joined up to a pension scheme - in other words, to automatically enrol (or “auto-enrol”) your employee(s).  You don’t need to do anything if you’re a sole director with no other staff, or your company has directors who have no employment contract.  That means contractors and freelancers who work through a limited company don't need to be concerned about the legal requirement, although you may still want to set up a pension scheme for yourself, which has some tax benefits.


But if you have any employees other than a sole director, you’ll need to auto-enrol some or all of them, or in some cases give them the choice. 

What auto-enrolment might mean for your company

Auto-enrolment has costs associated with setup and administration, and the minimum amount it’s possible to contribute in total is 2% of earnings above the lower earnings threshold in 2017.  1% of this is paid by the employer, 0.8% by the employee and 0.2% by the Government.  This figure rises to 8% (3% of which comes from the employer) by October 2018.

What can Whitehill provide?

We can provide a complete solution to auto-enrolment alongside our payroll service. We'll organise the assessment, enrolment, letters and paperwork, opening a pension plan and ensuring data is posted to the pension provider.  We can post data and manage the whole process for you in order to ensure that you stay compliant.  Please get in touch with us for details and an idea of cost. 

Please note: pensions administration is provided as an add-on service, so you will need to have a payroll service included in your basic package.