PayeRti.org

A FREE resource from the UK accountancy profession

PAYE Real Time Information, Universal Credit & your business Read More

131Months
22Days
SINCE PAYE RTI:
Report Issues

PAYE RTI News

RTI still teething almost a year on

March 18, 2014

 

As the end of the first year of RTI draws closer for most employers, HMRC have released a flurry of updates to their online RTI guidance. They have also created new sources of information to help employers complete the new year-end process, which must be completed by 19 April 2014 to avoid the risk of a penalty. These efforts represent HMRC's latest attempts to tackle some of the issues which have been affecting the operation of RTI as well as encouraging employers who have not reported PAYE in real time to begin now.

Although there is no longer a P35 form to complete, employers must still inform HMRC that they have paid the final payment for the 2013/14 tax year by completing the end of year questions on their final Full Payment Submission.  Online resources including a YouTube video have been released to assist employers and agents to complete their year-end declaration and questions successfully.  Several pages of the HMRC website have also been updated to reflect latest guidance on how to avoid common RTI issues and how to reconcile PAYE charges.  HMRC hopes these measures will reduce the need for employers and agents to contact them with PAYE balance enquiries. 

HMRC is also attempting to communicate with employers who appear not to have started reporting in real time by email, following previous postal communications in June and September 2013.  However, the effectiveness of HMRC’s electronic communications with employers and agents has been called into question because of their indiscriminate targeting and lack of specific information.  GNS messages were suspended in February as hundreds received the notices in error and were told to ignore them by frontline call centre staff at HMRC.  The email communication sent on the 17 March was believed by many to be a phishing scam and was criticised for its lack of usefulness because it contained no PAYE scheme specific information.

In a What’s New message published on their website, HMRC states that if employers have closed their PAYE scheme or made a real time submission since 14 February 2014 then they can ignore the email, but the lack of specific PAYE information in the communications means that an agent receiving the email must attempt to identify whether there is in a fact a non-compliance issue with no information to go on.  Payroll World reports that the email has been sent to around 70,000 email addresses with one reader commenting that “Payroll teams are not unpaid employees of HMRC and their prime purpose is not to make things more efficient for HMRC.”

The apparent inability of HMRC systems to accurately target RTI communications is feeding into employer and agent anxiety about how successfully HMRC will be able to administer automated penalties when they begin in October.

This anxiety is exacerbated by the continuing uncertainty surrounding employer PAYE account balances.  The reconciliation issue was again highlighted on 13 March when HMRC corrected a problem whereby some employments had been incorrectly merged (presumably by HMRC teams attempting to clear up some of the 20,000 duplicate PAYE records still extant within the systems), resulting in incorrect PAYE liabilities being stated on the Business Tax Dashboard.  The correction of the issue means that some employers may find they have paid either too much or too little tax: corrected figures will be displayed on the Dashboard in due course according to HMRC. 

HMRC apologised for any inconvenience the issue may have caused, but more robust demonstrations of its systems’ stability are needed if HMRC is to create employer and agent confidence in RTI, particularly in the areas of liability calculation and managing communication with employers and agents.

< Back to news

comments powered by Disqus