Auto enrolment and part time workers not paying tax

MrsBartolozzi

The company I work for have told us that we will all be autoenrolled very soon. The majority of the staff in our store work 20 hours per week on nmw and don't earn enough to pay tax. This includes myself. It was my understanding after reading the flyers that this auto enrollment only applied to those earning over ~£7.5k.

Have we been misinformed by store management (wouldn't be the first time information has filtered down incorrectly) or can they make us join their pension ? If the latter, as I don't pay tax is this not just like a savings account as I'd not get any tax relief, unlike those earning more?

NEST_Representative

Hi there,

Only people earning more than £8,105 will qualify for automatic enrolment.

If you earn more than £5,564 you can ask your employer to enrol you into the scheme and they must then pay at least minimum contributions as well. This would mean you would have to pay at least 0.8% of your salary and they would have to pay at least 1% at the moment.

With NEST, you can stop contributing at any time and start again, so you can take a break if you need to. This might not be the same with all schemes so you'd need to check with your employer.

If you want more information you can take a look at the government's website here: https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions/about-workplace-pensions

Hope this is helpful,

NEST

jamesd

You still get basic rate tax relief even if you are not a tax payer. So you would pay in 0.8%, tax relief would increase that to 1% and your employer would add 1% to make a total of 2%.

Your employer might be more generous than this but this is the current minimum they can do.