If your annual pay bill exceeds £3 million, you're required to pay into the apprenticeship levy. This liability applies regardless of whether you employ any apprentices.

The amount you need to pay is 0.5% of your annual pay bill. You also have an allowance of up to £15,000 that you can offset against this.

If you're part of a group of connected companies, with separate data for each company, you can split the apprenticeship levy across multiple companies.

 TIP: If you need to check, reconcile and submit the allowance, use our Process and submit the apprenticeship levy article.

Earnings in the calculation

The Apprenticeship levy calculation uses the Gross for NI for Apprenticeship Levy, which your software calculates automatically.

The report with this value isn't in Sage 50 Payroll by default, but you can download it below.

1. In Sage 50 Payroll, click Help then About.
2. Click the link under the Reports directory heading.
3. In the folder that opens, double-click the UserDef folder, keep this folder open.
4. Click the download link below.
   • Download Payment Summary History Part 2 - by Date (inc. Gross for NIC)
      TIP: The filename of this report is PAYDL15.report. 
5. Browse to the PAYDL15.report file you've downloaded, right-click on it and click Copy.
6. Return to the UserDef folder you opened in Step 3, right-click within it and click Paste.

You can now run this report as required. To find the report, click Reports, then click the User Defined (local) folder. Find and run the Payment Summary History Part 2 - By Date (inc. Gross for NIC) report.

The apprenticeship levy calculation

The calculation for the apprenticeship levy liability is:

(Applicable Gross for NIC To Date x 0.5%) - Apprenticeship levy allowance To Date = Apprenticeship levy liability To Date.
TIP: An easy way to multiply by 0.5% is to multiply by the Gross for NIC by 0.005.

Apprenticeship Levy Liability To Date - Apprenticeship Levy liability already paid = Apprenticeship Levy liability This Period.

The Apprenticeship Levy calculation works on a cumulative basis. 

To calculate the Apprenticeship Levy allowance to date, divide your annual Apprenticeship Levy allowance by 12. Then, multiply this by the number of tax months that you've processed in the year so far. 

For example, the default Apprenticeship Levy allowance is £15,000. To calculate your Apprenticeship Levy allowance as of month 3, use the following sum:

(£15,000 / 12) x 3 = £3,750.

Check your apprenticeship levy settings

1. Click Company then click Legislation.
2. Click the NI tab.
3. Click the Edit button beside Apprenticeship Levy Settings.

The settings are:

• Rate: 0.50
• Annual Allowance: £15,000.00
• Annual Threshold: £3,000,000.00

If you prefer, you can wait until you reach the annual threshold before Sage 50 Payroll calculates the apprenticeship levy. To do this, select the Defer calculation until annual threshold is reached check box.