Going part time

[Spyder01]

Hi,
Does anyone have experience of going part time as a driver? I appreciate lots of details are linked to specific TOC/FOCs but I'm trying to find out about take home pay/pension & brass contributions. For example, if full time salary is £54k, the higher rate of tax is paid, if it's half time hours brining the salary to £27k, what might pension contributions be, brass limited to and therefore take home pay? Any help, gratefully received

 

[tiptoptaff]

Hi,
Does anyone have experience of going part time as a driver? I appreciate lots of details are linked to specific TOC/FOCs but I'm trying to find out about take home pay/pension & brass contributions. For example, if full time salary is £54k, the higher rate of tax is paid, if it's half time hours brining the salary to £27k, what might pension contributions be, brass limited to and therefore take home pay? Any help, gratefully received

This applies to all grades, not just drivers.

If you go P/T, and eg work 2days a week instead of a 4day week, your pension accrual is halved. The RPS works in years - you don't buy money, you buy years. So full-time employees earn 1 year in the pension for every year worked. P/T you earn a year in the pension for every two years worked.

In terms of pay/tax/contributions etc, if you earn 27k, you'll pay the tax appropriate to a 27k salary - it matters not to HMRC if you've earned that working 20 or 40hrs a week (for example.) Pension contributions are a percentage of gross pay before tax, and so your contributions would be the same % of 27k as they are of 54K. BRASS I'm unsure of - I've read you can pay the amount in as if it was your full-time salary, I've read you can pay only pay in based on your P/T one.

Hope this helps

 

[Roger1973]

I may be stating the obvious, but there's an online calculator that works out tax and national insurance contributions here. These work on your total income, irrespective of whether that's part time / full time / having more than one job or source of income.

I can't offer any specifics on the railway pensions - in many pension schemes, contributions are a simple percentage so if you reduced hours and therefore pay, then your pension contributions would reduce in proportion - although some schemes give you an option to increase your voluntary pension contributions if you do this.

If nobody comes along with the answer, does your employer have a pensions / payroll office you could call / e-mail and ask?

I guess you also need to know what effect reducing your pension contributions would have on your expected pension. With some schemes that are / were based on 'final salary' it was very bad for your future pension to drop to part time, or in to a lower pay grade, in your later years of employment (in some schemes, the only way you could do it without damaging your pension was to resign your full time job and defer the pension, then re-join as a new starter in a part time or lower grade role.) Some defined benefit schemes now use a career average, or something like that, so it doesn't have the same effect.