using Salary Sacrifice for your pension? - check what is being paid into your pension

[BobbyD]

I’ve just started with parasol. My fault, I should have searched more but I’m new to umbrellas. What a con it seems to be.

when they told me of their intention to steal my money like this, they actually had the cheek to make it out they’re doing me a big favour. That somehow, as an employer, they can keep all the saving so by only keeping 25% of the saving, “aren’t we kind”. Like they somehow have done something with the end client to warrant keeping that money.

That they peddle this myth that they are actually my employer. It’s utter BS and makes me incredibly 😡…

so, moving to one of the others that charge for paying into a pension, but nowhere near what parasol charge.

[lucyclarityumbrella]

All seems a little more complex than needed don't you think???

[fulcon]

FWIW PayStream address this specifically in their Salary Sacrifice FAQ:

What happens to the employer’s NI saving?
As your gross pay is reduced by the amount of your pension contribution it means that our employer’s NI is also reduced, a saving we pass onto you in the form of additional gross pay. As this is additional income it is subject to tax and NI in the normal way.

[vwdan]

Well you do have an alternative - move to another umbrella - unless the agency insists that Parasol is your only option.


Got to say I did a quick run on the figures and Parasol would be pocketing £300+ a month from me through this trick..

Yes, I think I could have figured out move elsewhere myself! Unfortunately that's case - they do have a couple of others, they had far worse reputations. In fact I started with another one, and they had a bunch of threads on here with all sorts of stuff, so I moved to Parasol.

[rootsnall]

Yeah but the article says different umbrellas do it differently so how do you know if you are jumping out of the frying pan in to the fire? Strikes me that you need to be an expert in taxation to make sure your umbrella, who is supposed to handle your tax for you is doing the right thing. What a minefield. I don't relish getting an inside gig to be sure.

You ask for an illustration and study the figures. This thread just made me double check my payslip. I'd be using the word 'theft' when talking to Parasol. I think quite a few employers use this wheeze when people ask for salary sacrifice, and sadly many employees won't have a clue they are being diddled.

[northernladuk]

Well you do have an alternative - move to another umbrella - unless the agency insists that Parasol is your only option.


Got to say I did a quick run on the figures and Parasol would be pocketing £300+ a month from me through this trick..

Yeah but the article says different umbrellas do it differently so how do you know if you are jumping out of the frying pan in to the fire? Strikes me that you need to be an expert in taxation to make sure your umbrella, who is supposed to handle your tax for you is doing the right thing. What a minefield. I don't relish getting an inside gig to be sure.

[eek]

Incredibly frustrating, especially when you have no reasonable alternatives

Well you do have an alternative - move to another umbrella - unless the agency insists that Parasol is your only option.


Got to say I did a quick run on the figures and Parasol would be pocketing £300+ a month from me through this trick..

[vwdan]

Incredibly frustrating, especially when you have no reasonable alternatives. I will say, to be vaguely fair, they did communicate it - but yeah, total rip off.

[vwdan]

Incredibly frustrating, especially when you have no reasonable alternatives

[northernladuk]

That's crazy. How are they allowed to get away with that.

In the audits, we discovered that umbrella companies calculate employment costs differently when a contractor has opted into a salary sacrifice pension and contributions are detailed differently on the payslips.

This blows my mind. I thought the whole point of using FCSA accredited umbrellas is because they all did it the same and did it properly. Will FCSA be commenting on this?

[eek]

Contractor Voice has just posted the following and it seems Parasol changed how they do things from 1st July so that not all the Employer NI savings are going to your pension pot and they are keeping some of them for themselves.

https://contractorvoice.org/salary-s...ld-be-careful/

So time to add Parasol to the "use anyone else" list