Questions and Answers
Director-only companies and Auto Enrolment
My brother and I run our own limited company. We’re both directors and we put a notional salary through the payroll for ourselves; but there are no other staff. We’ve received a letter from the Pensions Regulator with our Staging Date for Auto Enrolment. We’ve both got private personal pension schemes, so we don’t want to have one for the company as well. Is there any way we can get around this?
If you don’t have any staff other than directors, you may not have any automatic enrolment duties. You won’t have any duties if the only people working for you are:
- you as the sole director, or
- a number of directors, none of whom has an employment contract, or
- a number of directors, only one of whom has an employment contract
Automatic enrolment will apply if more than one director has a contract of employment.
Therefore as you are both directors and assuming neither of you have contracts of employment in place, then you will not have any Auto Enrolment duties. If you have determined that you do not have any Auto Enrolment duties then you must tell The Pensions Regulator before your staging date. To do this, you may either:
- complete an online form
- email [email protected] and complete the details in the pre-populated message that opens when you select our email address. You’ll need your letter code, PAYE reference and Companies House number to hand.
- download and follow the instructions in the Pension Regulator’s no employer duties email template
Date published 5 Jun 2015
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