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Social Security
Social Security or National Insurance (UK and Isle of Man) legislation for Mariners has been in force for many decades. Each Country has its own legislation; however since 1971 the European Union has had multi-lateral legislation in place that covers all the members of the EU and the EEA and Switzerland. This legislation was updated in May 2010 when the EU agreed to replace the previous legislation with Regulation 883/2004. Lesia also has details of most other prominent countries Social Security legislation with regard to Mariners.
The European Commission has announced that with effect from 1st May 2014, there will be a new automated social security exchange of information system for all its members. Amongst other things this system will provide all member states with the following benefits:
• Standardised flows of information
• Better multilingual communication thanks to common structured documents
• Optimised verification and collection of data
Therefore, if Seafarers are not in a social security system and should be, there is a very good chance that one or more of the EU member states will question whether contributions should be paid.
Lesia can provide yacht owners with an assessment as to whether or not there is an existing employer’s liability to pay secondary social security contributions. This assessment is based on a number of factors including, jurisdiction of owning company, payment of wages, employers jurisdiction etc. The costs of an assessment can be offset against our fees once a yacht owner becomes a client.
Once the Services Agreement has been signed, Lesia will assess each individual crewmember’s Social Security responsibilities and enter the result of the assessment on the contract in keeping with the requirements that will come into force with MLC 2006. This assessment will be carried out for all employees, irrespective of their Nationality or Residence status or the jurisdictions of the yacht owner, payer of wages etc. Lesia also carries out Social Security assessments for crew and more details can be found under Crew Services. For further information on MLC 2006 please see this section.
