Forecast how the April 2025 National Insurance (NI) changes may affect future liability

Download and use a Sage 50 Payroll report to forecast the April 2025 employer NI increase on future pay periods.

One of the changes announced in the Autumn Budget 2024 was an increase to employer NI from 6 April 2025.

The rate of contributions increases from 13.8% to 15%, and the threshold that employer NI is due from decreases from £9,100 to £5,000. This means some employees whose pay didn't incur employer NI on the old rates will incur it on the new rates. 

 NOTE: To see more details on the NI changes and view examples, visit the rate and threshold changes to NI in the 2025/26 tax year article. 

We created and released a report that gave you an indication of your NI liability on the new rates. The report was available from January 2025, and is still available today.

Sage 50 Payroll v31 is now available and it includes the NI legislation changes, to keep your calculations in the 2025/2026 tax year compliant.

However, if you'd like to use the forecast report on periods in the future, for example Christmas, you still can. To do this, continue to follow this article.

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Watch the video

You can watch the video below to find out more about the NI changes, and how to use the report. You can also read more about the report below the video.

When you're ready, you can access the report in the download the report section further down in this article.

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How the report works

When you run the report, enter a date range in the 2024/25 tax year. The report includes any periods you processed in this date range for the comparison.

The report takes employees' NIable pay and calculates the employer NI liability using the rates effective from 6 April 2025.

You can then see the NI you paid, compared to what it may be on the new rates.

Important information

The report provides an indication of your future liability. Your actual liability when you process a payroll for 6 April 2025 or after in v31 depends on the exact payments you process.

If you have any directors, the report can't calculate their NI because it works differently to employees. If you need to forecast the NI for any directors, you need to calculate this manually. 

Employment Allowance affects your employer NI liability if you claim it, which the report doesn't include. 

 NOTE: If you're entitled to Employment Allowance, you need to factor this into your report results manually. This allowance increases to £10,500 per year from 6 April 2025. 

If you have any questions about the report, visit the NI forecast report FAQs article.

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Download the report

1. Click the link below to download the report.
• Employer NI Costs Indications.report
2. This normally downloads automatically to your Downloads folder. If you're prompted to save the file, select your Downloads folder, then click Save.
3. Browse to the report you've downloaded, named Employer NI Costs Indications.report and right-click on it, then click Copy.
4. In Sage 50 Payroll, click Help then About.
5. Under the Program Details heading, click the link beneath Reports directory.
6. Double-click the UserDef folder.
7. Right-click within this folder and click Paste.

You've added the report to your software. Follow the steps below to run the report.

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Run the report

1. Select the employees on your employee list that you'd like to include.
    TIP: To include all employees, click Clear then Swap. 
2. Click the Reports button.
3. Select the User Defined (Local) folder in the list to the left.
4. Select the Employer NI Costs Indications report.
5. Select either the preview, print or export button as you prefer.
6. In the Criteria Values window, enter the date range you'd like the report to include then click OK.

Current and projected NI

The two columns under the Current heading show you the gross earnings for NI, and the employer NI due on the existing rates. This is for each period, with a subtotal per employee.

Under the Projected heading, you can see the earnings for NI and the projected NI liability based on the new rates and thresholds.

New Cost column

Part of the changes in the new tax year is a reduction to the threshold from which employer NI is due.

This means that some employees may have a potential contribution based on the new legislation, where it was zero on the current legislation. The report highlights these employees with a Y under the New Cost column.

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