If you are an owner-manager of a small business then you probably find a discussion about your own pension arrangements a bit of a necessary evil that you need to look at every now and then. So considering the pension position of your employees is even more of a chore.

However, under new legislation that is currently being implemented, all businesses need to set up a company pension scheme within the next few years.

Although some recent research by the Pension Regulator showed a healthy 82% of small businesses had some awarenenss of the new pension rules, rather alarmingly almost half (47%) didn't know the date by which they had to sort all of this out.

Each business has been allocated a staging date by the Government, by which time they must have started the process of setting up an auto-enrolment plan.

Staging dates for individual businesses could be any time over the next two or three years and therefore you need to find out what your date is and then come up with an Action Plan for complying with the new rules.

We can help you with both aspects of the pension auto-enrolment laws (finding out your staging date and developing your plan of action) so, if you need any help the person to contact is our Tax Director, Steve Bird, on 01245 258689 or by email to [email protected].

Start the ball rolling on this straight away before it becomes a bigger problem with tight deadlines by which time you need to comply.