With the introduction of penalties for late PAYE payments, HMRC will be sending warning letters if you do not pay on time. This may be done the first time in the tax year if HMRC think the payment is late (see our previous article Penalties for late PAYE payment to be issued from 2010/2011).

The letter is not a penalty notice and is only to let you know that HMRC think a payment has been made late and that a penalty could be charged. You may not always get a warning letter and importantly you would still get charged a penalty if you have made a late payment (normally more than once in tax year).

Obviously if a payment has been made late then you need to ensure you pay on time to avoid becoming liable to a penalty in future – see below for ways to remind you of tax deadlines.

If you believe that you have been sent a letter in error then you do not need to contact HMRC. You need to make a note of why you don’t think a penalty would be chargeable in case HMRC contact you in future concerning penalty action.

HMRC will contact you before a penalty is charged and will send you a penalty notice.

Avoiding warning letters where no PAYE/NIC due 

If no PAYE/NIC payments are due then you can avoid an unnecessary warning letter or payment reminder by informing HMRC on or before your normal payment that no payment is due. You can do this using the HMRC online notification service for no PAYE/NICs payments due.

Reminders for tax deadlines

If would like email alerts to remind you of various tax deadlines there is a useful link tax deadline email alerts on the Business Link website  that will enable you to setup a tax deadline calendar personal to your business. You will need to register with Business Link and then following instructions shown in the above link and provide some basic information on your business.