You are probably too busy running your company to think about your pension, but you should give this some thought before the deadlines overtake you.
Your company can only claim deductions for pension contributions made within the accounting period. If it has a 31 December year end you should now review the level of contributions made on behalf of the directors and senior employees. Do you want to increase contributions to your own pension fund if you have had a good year?
Before you decide, check how much annual allowance you have available for pension contributions in 2018-19. The standard allowance is £40,000 but this is reduced to £4,000 if you have already flexibly accessed benefits from a defined contribution pension scheme, even if you received those benefits in an earlier year
If your income is expected to be £110,000 or more for 2018-19 you need to check whether the total pension contributions paid on your behalf, plus your income, will top £150,000. In this case your annual allowance is tapered down by £1 for every £2 over the £150,000 threshold to a minimum of £10,000. We can help you with this calculation.
It is worth checking whether any highly paid individuals on your payroll have been automatically re-enrolled into their workplace pension scheme. This should happen every three years on the anniversary of the date the individual was first autoenrolled.
Even a small contribution made into the workplace pension can cause the individual’s annual allowance to be exceeded and they could lose the fixed protection of their pension lifetime allowance.
