Fan Mo
Fernanda Bajanca
Quentin Loisel
Paying your employer's national insurance and pension out of your personal allowance
7 Comments
Dear Michael, thanks very much for the clarification. However, please correct me if I am wrong, I think the university does indeed recieves some amount of monthly money for hosting a MC IF, no? (I don't remember the numbers, but I remember reading or hearing someone saying so...) Wouldn't it be fair to use that money to pay (maybe part) of these employment costs?
This is not how it works, unfortunately. From the MC financial guidelines (FP7, but I would expect the H2020 version to be similar):
"The living allowance is a financial contribution of the Union to the salary costs of the fellow (gross salary and employer's social security charges). The net salary paid out to the researcher will result from deducting all compulsory social security contributions as well as direct taxes (e.g. income tax) from the gross salary amounts."
This essentially means that all salary costs are to be paid from the living allowance. This apparently includes the employer's NI share.
You can find all the regulations about your fellowship online, please feel free to dig in. Sorry that I can't provide a link, the last time I looked into this was three years ago before my fellowship started.
Thanks Michael.
To be honest I did not read the guidelines before and was surprised because some of my colleagues that had a MC several years ago told me the situation was different back then. But they may have changed these rules in between. My concern was if the decision of including the employer's NI share was different between instituions/countries but if it is in the MC financial guidelines I think it is fine.
I would strongly advise to have a look at the current regulations. My advice was based on FP7 regulations which were published in 2010. H2020 has new regulations and although I would expect them to be similar, it doesn't hurt to check the current regulations. Consider it part of the work experience that the fellowship is supposed to give you ;)
Will do. Thanks.
Hi,
the same happens in my Univerisity (Sheffield), so I opted out.
I'm not sure if our host received money specifically for this. But I think it would make sense that they also do some contribution for someone they receive basically for free with European Union money. Moreover, if differents universities have different criteria about this issue, it results in inequality among MC fellows. Not sure what I could do about this, so I simply opted out.
You can opt out of pension. Ask your HR or payroll officer.
Regarding national insurance, it's actually your insurance that you pay for, not your employer's. In a normal job the employer pays 2/3rds of NI, and the employee pays 1/3rd, and therefore the employee does not see the share that the employer pays. The university does not receive additional money to cover for employer's shares of employment costs, therefore it takes the 2/3rds out of your salary as well.
Hope this clears things up.