Figures › Maternity, paternity, adoption and other family pay

Small Employers' Relief: National Insurance threshold

The National Insurance bill below which an employer counts as small and recovers statutory payments with compensation.

£45,000.00per year

Corroborated Statutory Instrument Great Britain in force since 2004-04-06

Checked against its sources: statute verified 2026-09-21·guidance verified 2026-09-21

Scope: £45,000 of Class 1 contributions payments in the qualifying tax year. GOV.UK states the small-employer recovery as a 109% total; regulation 3 states the ADDITIONAL compensation percentage, not a total — that row is a D14 shape (the record is what the law states, the total is a derivation) and is not authored here. The prior threshold's own start date is not read from any archived instrument and is marked pending backfill.

Current sources

Source A · Legislationhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/698/made (SI 2004/698 reg 2: in regulation 2(1) of the 1994 Regulations, "for “£40,000” there shall be substituted “£45,000”"; in force 6 April 2004 for payments of statutory maternity pay made on or after that date, reg 1(2))

retrieved 2026-09-08

Source B · Official guidancehttps://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-thresholds-for-employers-2026-to-2027 ("109% if your total Class 1 National Insurance for the previous tax year is £45,000 or lower")

retrieved 2026-07-29

History

Value	From	To	Status	Sources
£45,000.00	2004-04-06	—	Corroborated	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/698/made (SI 2004/698 reg 2: in regulation 2(1) of the 1994 Regulations, "for “£40,000” there shall be substituted “£45,000”"; in force 6 April 2004 for payments of statutory maternity pay made on or after that date, reg 1(2)) retrieved 2026-09-08 Official guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-thresholds-for-employers-2026-to-2027 ("109% if your total Class 1 National Insurance for the previous tax year is £45,000 or lower") retrieved 2026-07-29
£40,000.00	unknown	2004-04-05	Primary source only	Legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/698/made (SI 2004/698 reg 2: in regulation 2(1) of the 1994 Regulations, "for “£40,000” there shall be substituted “£45,000”"; in force 6 April 2004 for payments of statutory maternity pay made on or after that date, reg 1(2)) retrieved 2026-09-08

Receipt

Everything above is reproducible and independently checkable — no trust in this site required (how verification works).

Figure ID: employment.statutory_payments.small_employer_threshold
Name in the API: Small employers' relief: contributions payments threshold
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): si·GBP/year·GB·corroborated
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:4b431f4f62b207bd8f535c7a9d3467893b13beceb5339b18c53f413f680f483c
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:9cd2ea20a1901b6ab90716ed2eda74035cfafe4ebe60dca418516efed5d6ef6e; Official guidance: sha256:2b130359261b54fc8f27f3e53cade20f559a6035397c2e3845de72e21ea4eede
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.statutory_payments.small_employer_threshold"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.statutory_payments.small_employer_threshold · current only: /v1/figures/employment.statutory_payments.small_employer_threshold/current

Compiler's notes

Named from source by the instrument finder (WS6-INSTRUMENT-MAP.md, 2026-09-08): the current-view 1994 Regulations carry an F-note citing SI 2004/698 regs 1(2), 2. The parser read zero amendments from that instrument until its older "there shall be substituted" drafting was admitted; it makes two (GB and the Northern Ireland mirror), and the enactment name in the selector picks the GB one.