Hi,

​You must have seen the television advertisements about auto-enrollment.

....and your butler, housekeeper, cleaner, gardener and children's nanny probably have as well.

You see if you employ them on more than £10,600pa (and they are below the state retirement age) you must auto enroll them into a pensionsscheme and contribute at least 1% of their salary, rising to 3% by 2018.

The date from which you have to enroll them depends on the random way in which the "staging dates" - the deadline for signing them up - have been allocated. 

If you have a housekeeper you could have a date of 1 June 2015 and a couple with a cleaner could have 1 November 2016. The latest date is 1 April 2017, which many thought was the date for all 'micro' businesses, but a client of mine with only 6 employees has already had to sign up ready for 1 June 2015 to avoid a £400 fine.

So find out when your 'domestic' staging date is - its not only businesses that have to pay their staff pensions but households with a butler as well.

Noel Guilford

Noel Guilford is the principal of Guilford Accounting a small business accountancy practice specialising in advising owner-managed businesses on current accounting, finance, and tax matters. You can reach him via email at noel@guilfordaccounting.co.uk or by phone at 01244 660866. He is the author of the best selling book 'Figure it out - an entrepreneurs guide to understanding your business numbers' which you can obtain by visiting http://guilfordaccounting.co.uk/figureit out. His forthcoming book 'Know your business numbers' will be published in the autumn.