The UK’s auto-enrolment pension scheme, introduced in 2012, has transformed the landscape of workplace pensions by making it compulsory for employers to automatically enroll eligible employees into a workplace pension. This initiative ensures that more people are saving for retirement, but it also places significant compliance responsibilities on businesses.

Most employers in the UK will have to carry out at least one auto-enrolment pension assessment. The aim of the assessment is to assign a pension status to your workers, and identify anyone that needs to be placed automatically in a qualifying pension scheme.

Salary Sacrifice, also known as salary exchange, is a method of paying into a pension scheme. There are other salary sacrifice schemes besides pensions, but they are sometimes treated differently for tax and National Insurance purposes.

Tax relief on pensions should be straightforward, but can become complex, and sometimes people get lost with what is supposed to be happening with their pension contributions. As more employers become involved with auto-enrolment pensions, we are commonly receiving questions about tax relief.