Five key dates in 2012 to tell clients about

This year is packed full of regulatory change you and your clients might need to discuss. Below are the dates of the top changes affecting your customers.

31 January

Self-assessment tax deadline Self-employed people must file their tax returns online and pay any outstanding tax for the year ending April 2011 by 31 January. The deadline for paper returns was 31 October 2011.

21 March

The Budget The yearly raft of changes usually has something that affects everyone in it, from changes to income tax levels and benefits uprating to how much more we will all pay for a pint. The Budget is always worth keeping an eye on.

5 April

A pair of pension changes

(1) Fixed protection application deadline
In the next tax year the government will reduce the lifetime allowance (LTA) on pension funds from £1.8m to £1.5m. People who may exceed that threshold through investment growth on their fund can apply for fixed protection from punitive tax charges by 5 April 2012, and stop making contributions to their pension fund by that date.

(2) The end of contracting out Contracting out a state second pension (S2P) into a defined contribution pension will be banned from this date.

1 September

Auto-enrolment begins Employers with 120,000 employees or more must notify staff of auto-enrolment before this date. The staging date to begin auto-enrolling for this group is 1 October 2012.

21 December

The end of gender The use of gender as a factor to price insurance contracts will become illegal, meaning annuity rates and insurance quotes will not be different for men and women.