Salary sacrifice (also known as salary exchange) offers a way to set up pension payments that can allow both employers and their employees to make a saving. Throughout these pages you’ll find a series of tools designed to help you introduce the concept to your clients, along with all the information you need to help them make an informed decision. The information provided is based on our understanding of current tax laws. These laws and our understanding of them may change in the future. Tax treatment will depend on the individual circumstances of each client and may be subject to change in the future.
Salary sacrifice explained
Salary sacrifice is a way of making pension contributions that could allow both employers and employees to save money.
- An employee agrees to give up part of their salary or bonus in exchange for a pension payment paid by their employer.
- Employers pay lower National Insurance Contributions (NICs) as a result of paying their employees a reduced salary.
- Employees also pay lower NICs and possibly less income tax.
- Employers are free to use their NIC saving how they wish. Some might use a portion of it to supplement their employees' pension plans.
- NIC savings can be used to boost employees' pension provision or increase their take home pay.
At the moment, we believe that salary sacrifice doesn't work seamlessly with the auto-enrolment process. Employers can't make an agreement for salary sacrifice a pre-condition for auto-enrolment. However, employers can choose to operate salary sacrifice before or after the auto-enrolment process or use it as an alternative contribution basis to a default basis (without sacrifice). Alternatively, employers can look into amending contracts of employment to have the same effect as salary sacrifice. Employers may need to take expert advice on salary sacrifice before deciding what they want to do.
Salary sacrifice calculators
Our salary sacrifice calculators can help calculate the benefits that can be achieved through an agreed salary sacrifice between an employer and employee and demonstrate if it's the right option for your clients.
Our calculators allow for both individual and bulk calculations, and offer the following features:
- A comprehensive set of input fields make it easy to capture information that reflects a wide variety of client circumstances.
- Before and after scenarios highlight the benefits for employees and employers.
- Select the proportion of employer's savings to redistribute to employees (0-100%).
Our bulk salary sacrifice input form is ideal for large group schemes. It will save you the effort of carrying out numerous calculations using our individual calculator and offers:
- A scheme level snapshot of the saving the employer stands to make.
- Before and after scenarios for each member, reflecting salary, NIC payments and pension contributions.
You can download the below calculators to help you do this. Scheme information must be typed or pasted into the inputs tab on the spreadsheet, then click the 'Calculate' button. Please ensure you are using the latest version of the calculator.
Please read the important notes included within each calculator before proceeding.
- UK Tax Rate Salary Sacrifice calculator (excluding Scottish Tax Rate)
Literature
We've produced a series of guides you can use to explain salary sacrifice to your clients.
- Employer quick guide to salary sacrifice Introduces the concept and highlights the potential cost saving to employers.
- Employer technical guide to salary sacrifice Explores the different ways salary sacrifice can be set up, including examples of how it works in practice for a range of scenarios.
- Member guide - no employer NIC reinvestment Uses an example case to explain the concept, and highlights the potential benefits and some of the issues members should consider.
- Member guide - employer NIC reinvestment For members whose employer has decided to reinvest some of their NIC saving.