The Social Security (Contributions) Regulations 2001

Earnings periods for directors

8.—(1) Where a person is, or is appointed, or ceases to be a director of a company during any year the amount, if any, of earnings-related contributions payable in respect of earnings paid to or for the benefit of that person in respect of any employed earner’s employment with that company shall, subject to regulations 12 and 14 to 17, be assessed on the amount of all such earnings paid (whether or not paid weekly) in the earnings periods specified in paragraphs (2) to (5).

(2) Where on one or more than one occasion a person is appointed a director of a company during the course of a year the earnings period in respect of such earnings as are paid in so much of the year as remains in the period commencing with the week in which he is appointed or, as the case may be, first appointed shall be the number of weeks in that period.

(3) Where a person is a director of a company at the beginning of a year the earnings period in respect of such earnings shall be that year, whether or not he remains such a director throughout that year.

(4) Where the earnings paid in respect of two or more employed earner’s employments fall to be aggregated and the earnings periods in respect of those earnings would be of different lengths, then—

(a) if those periods are determined only by paragraphs (1) to (3); or

(b) if the length of one or more of those periods is determined by those paragraphs and the length of one or more of the others is determined by any other provision of these Regulations,

the earnings period in respect of all those earnings shall be the period determined by those paragraphs or, where there is more than one such period, the longer or longest period so determined.

(5) Where a person is no longer a director of a company and, in any year after that in which he ceased to be a director of that company, he is paid earnings in respect of any period during which he was such a director, then—

(a) notwithstanding regulation 15, those earnings shall not be aggregated with any other earnings with which they would otherwise fall to be aggregated; and

(b) the earnings period in respect of those earnings shall be the year in which they are paid.

(6) Without prejudice to the paragraphs (1) to (5), a director and any company employing him may pay on account of any earnings-related contributions that may become payable by them such amounts as would be payable by way of such contributions if those paragraphs did not apply.