Employers’ National Insurance rates are going up in 2025, meaning the cost of employing staff will increase.

If you own a small business, you might be wondering how this will impact your bottom line.

The good news is there are also key changes to the Employment Allowance coming in to help smaller businesses like yours offset these cost increases.

This article explains how to take advantage of the Employment Allowance and offset your employer National Insurance contributions.

So if you’re an employer, keep reading to understand how your cash flow will be affected in 2025.

Here’s what we cover:

Changes to employers’ National Insurance contributions (NICs)

As an employer, you pay secondary Class 1 National Insurance contributions (NICs) on all employees’ earnings above the secondary threshold, which in the 2024/25 tax year is £9,100.

The UK Government recently announced changes to employers’ NICs for the 2025/26 tax year in the Autumn Budget. These payroll changes will raise revenue for funding public services such as the NHS.

The Budget confirmed that employers’ National Insurance rates will be raised from 13.8% to 15%, effective April 2025.

The employer NICs secondary threshold will also be reduced from £9,100 to £5,000 per year, meaning more employers will become eligible to pay NICs.

These changes will increase the cost of employing staff as a result. So, to help minimise the impact on smaller businesses, the Employment Allowance will also increase—see more details below.

The UK Government estimate the result of the Budget changes will impact around 1.2 million employers.

Approximately 250,000 employers will see a decrease in secondary Class 1 NICs liability, 940,000 will see an increase, and 820,000 employers’ costs may stay the same.

Key dates for employers’ National Insurance changes

The above payroll changes will come into effect from 6 April 2025.

The secondary threshold of £5,000 a year will be in effect from 6 April 2025 until 5 April 2028.

From April 2028, the thresholds for National Insurance will start rising in line with inflation.

What is the Employment Allowance and how does it work?

The purpose of the Employment Allowance is to help eligible employers reduce their annual secondary Class 1 National Insurance liability.

Currently, you can only claim up to a maximum of £5,000 each tax year. But from April 2025, the allowance is increasing to £10,500.

The Autumn Budget also announced the removal of a significant restriction to the Employment Allowance.

Currently, employers that have incurred a secondary Class 1 NI liability of more than £100,000 are unable to claim the allowance. But this will be completely removed from 6 April 2025.

This opens up the Employment Allowance to all eligible businesses and charities, regardless of how large their secondary Class 1 NICs liabilities were in the tax year prior to the year of the claim.

According to the Autumn Budget, these changes will mean 865,000 employers will pay no NICs in 2025.

However, you are still not eligible to claim the allowance if your business is doing more than half of its work in the public sector, such as local councils and NHS services (unless you’re a charity).

You also can’t claim if your company only has one director and that person is the only employee liable for secondary Class 1 NICs.

Forecast how the 2025 National Insurance changes may affect liability

Are you a Sage 50 Payroll user? We’ve created a Sage 50 Payroll report that you can download and use to forecast the April 2025 employers’ National Insurance increase.

Learn more

How to claim the Employment Allowance

You need to claim Employment Allowance every tax year (6 April to 5 April). You can claim it at any time during the year, but the earlier you claim, the sooner you will get the allowance.

You can make a claim for the Employment Allowance as part of your PAYE submission process, using either:

It should be straightforward to claim through your payroll software – but check with your software vendor if you’re unsure.

For some software solutions, for example, you just need to tick the box that indicates you will be claiming the Employment Allowance the next time you submit an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) to HMRC.

If your payroll software does not have an Employment Payment Summary option, you can use HMRC’s Basic PAYE Tools.

On the Basic Tools homepage, select the correct name in the “Employer” menu.

Select “Change employer details” then select “Yes” in the “Employment Allowance indicator” field.

Only answer “Yes” to the question “Do state aid rules apply?” if de minimis state aid rules apply to you. Otherwise, answer “No” and send your EPS as normal.

Note: HMRC recently announced that the state aid rules will no longer apply from April 2025, so all Employment Allowance claims should specify “No” to the state aid question. The question will be removed altogether from April 2026.

HMRC won’t send you a formal letter for your Employment Allowance, so you don’t need to wait for confirmation. You can begin using your Employment Allowance as soon you submit your claim.

How Employment Allowance changes could affect a small business

Here’s an example of the Employment Allowance changes at work.

Let’s say you run a small UK business, Swings & Hammocks Ltd, and you employ three full-time staff.

For the 2024/25 tax year, your secondary Class 1 employer NIC rate is 13.8% and your secondary threshold is £9,100 for each employee.

You calculate your secondary Class 1 employer NICs for the year, totalling £8,653.

You’re also able to claim the full £5,000 Employment Allowance and reduce your National Insurance liability to £3,653.

Your staff numbers and salaries remain the same throughout the 2025/26 tax year, but your secondary Class 1 employer NIC rate increases to 15% and your secondary threshold reduces to £5,000.

You calculate your secondary Class 1 employer NICs total of £11,250 before the Employment Allowance. That’s an increase of around 30% from the previous year’s total of £8,653.

You’re also able to claim the full new Employment Allowance amount of £10,500 and reduce your National Insurance liability to £750.

So due to the Employment Allowance, you end up paying less secondary Class 1 employer NICs for the 2025/26 tax year. Your employer NICs liability actually reduces by £2,903.

Final thoughts

The increase to the Employment Allowance aims to help smaller businesses offset increased costs due to the payroll changes coming into effect in 2025.

And, as you can see from the example above, the changes can actually result in reducing your annual employer NICs liability.

So make sure you’re claiming the Employment Allowance each year as part of your PAYE submission process.

If you need assistance setting up your business payroll or you’re unsure whether you are eligible for the Employment Allowance, we recommend speaking directly with an accountant or payroll expert.

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