Accountants Reading News

PAYE/NIC RTI late filing and payment penalties – update and new concessions

Posted by: edwinsmith on February 24th, 2015

Late filing penalties

Employers with less than 50 employees should be reminded that PAYE late filing penalties will apply to them from 6 March 2015. These employers have previously benefitted from a concession introduced last October for late filing penalties ( Edwin Smith article -PAYE late filing concessions) but see below for continuing reporting concession for Micro Employers (less than 10 employees with PAYE schemes registered before 6 April 2014).

HMRC have introduced a new concession for employers and HMRC will not charge penalties for delays of up to three days in filing PAYE information.

Any employer who has incurred an in-year late filing penalty between 6 October 2014 and 5 January 2015 where they were less than three days late can appeal online against the penalty by completing the “Other” box and adding “Return filed within 3 days”.

Micro Employers concession – These employers are allowed to make PAYE RTI submissions by the 5 of each month and not on or before any payments made within the month and this concession is planned to end April 2016.

Late payment penalties

Automatic penalties for late PAYE payments were due to start from 6 April, but HMRC have recently announced that late payment penalties will continue to be reviewed on a risk- assessed basis rather than be issued automatically.

As a reminder refer to the HMRC PAYE/NIC late payments that detail the penalties that can be incurred.

HMRC have also announced measures to prevent the unnecessary penalties being issued, HMRC will be closing around 15,000 PAYE schemes next month that have not made a PAYE report since April 2013 and which appear to have ceased.

HMRC will write to the affected schemes to tell them about the planned closure and what to do if they are, or should be, operating PAYE.

Please contact us if you require any advice or assistance with PAYE RTI payroll submissions

Filed under: Employers, PAYE

Checking your 2015/16 PAYE code

Posted by: edwinsmith on February 21st, 2015

HMRC have recently started issuing PAYE coding notices for 2015/16. If you believe the PAYE code is incorrect then it is now possible to inform HMRC of why you think the code is wrong online 2015-16 PAYE coding notice query form.

HMRC can still be contacted by phone to query or amend PAYE codes - Telephone: 0300 200 3300.

Please contact us if you would like to assistance with checking PAYE code number.

Filed under: Individuals, PAYE, Tax

Revised advisory fuel rates 1 December 2014

Posted by: edwinsmith on January 1st, 2015

H.M. Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have published the latest advisory fuel rates relating to mileage payments for business travel in company cars. These are as follows:

Engine size Petrol LPG
1400cc or less 13p ↓ 9p ↔
1401cc to 2000cc 16p ↔ 11p ↔
Over 2000cc 23p ↓ 16p ↔

Engine size Diesel
1600cc or less 11p ↔
1601cc to 2000cc 13p ↔
Over 2000cc 16p ↓

The changes this quarter are highlighted in red above.

The new rates will be effective from 1 December 2014. However for the first month employers may continue to use the previously published rates if they choose to.

These rates will be reviewed again in February 2015 and any changes made will be effective from 1 March 2015. The revised fuel rates will be published on the fuel rates page on the HMRC website when they are released.

Advisory fuel rates can be used to calculate the following:

Reimbursement to employees of fuel used for business travel in a company car;
Repayment by employees of fuel used for personal travel in a company car;
Allowable input VAT claims on business mileage claims in personal cars made by employees.
A more detailed explanation of the use of these rates is on the HMRC website.

The rates applying for earlier periods are also on the HMRC website.

If you have any questions regarding the use of advisory fuel rates or mileage payments please contact us.

Filed under: Business, Company, Employers, Individuals, VAT

Small Employers – RTI penalty concession

Posted by: edwinsmith on September 17th, 2014

HMRC have recently announced that they will now relax penalty regulations for small employers with 49 or fewer employees in respect of PAYE RTI submissions. This is further to an article we published in August 2014 concerning the late filing penalties to be introduced from October in respect of PAYE RTI submissions.

This will mean for small employers that the penalty regulations for making a late PAYE RTI submission will be delayed and will not take effect until March 2015.

Small employers should be aware that the Month 12 submission for 2014/15 will need to be made on time to avoid a penalty. There is a general first month concession of a penalty not being charged for a late submission for the first month in each tax year but this will not apply for small employers in March 2015.

This small employer concession should not be confused with the separate concession for micro employers with or nine or fewer employees (PAYE schemes registered before 6 April 2014). As a reminder these employers are allowed to make PAYE RTI submission by the 5 of each month and not on or before any payments made within the month.

For employers with 10 to 49 employees technically you still need to make a PAYE RTI submission on or before the payments within the tax month but with the new concession there will not be a penalty now until March 2015 for late submissions.

HMRC have issued a help sheet for PAYE late filing penalties which provides further information.

Please contact us if you require any advice

Filed under: Business, Employers, PAYE

Revised advisory fuel rates 1 September 2014

Posted by: edwinsmith on September 5th, 2014

H.M. Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have published the latest advisory fuel rates relating to mileage payments for business travel in company cars. These are as follows:

Engine size	Petrol	LPG
1400cc or less	14p ↔	9p ↔
1401cc to 2000cc	16p ↔	11p ↔
Over 2000cc	24p ↔	16p ↔

Engine size	Diesel
1600cc or less	11p ↓
1601cc to 2000cc	13p ↓
Over 2000cc	17p ↔

The changes this quarter are highlighted in red above.

The new rates will be effective from 1 September 2014. However for the first month employers may continue to use the previously published rates if they choose to.

These rates will be reviewed again in November 2014 and any changes made will be effective from 1 December 2014. The revised fuel rates will be published on the fuel rates page on the HMRC website when they are released.

Advisory fuel rates can be used to calculate the following:

Reimbursement to employees of fuel used for business travel in a company car;
Repayment by employees of fuel used for personal travel in a company car;
Allowable input VAT claims on business mileage claims in personal cars made by employees.

A more detailed explanation of the use of these rates is on the HMRC website.

The rates applying for earlier periods are also on the HMRC website.

If you have any questions regarding the use of advisory fuel rates or mileage payments please contact us.

Filed under: Business, Company, Employers, PAYE, VAT

New timetable for RTI penalties and interest – October 2014 late filing penalties

Posted by: edwinsmith on August 29th, 2014

Further to our article earlier this year on RTI penalties being phased in, the automatic ‘in-year’ late filing penalty will commence from 6 October 2014. To ensure a late filing penalty is not issued all filings due must be up to date as at 5 October 2014. Do not forget that if no employees have been paid in a tax period an EPS must be filed.

These rules apply to each PAYE scheme rather than each employer so an employer must ensure that all PAYE schemes submissions are up to date as at 5 October 2014 and filed on time thereafter. Update - there is now a until March 2015 for employers with 49 employees or under.

Penalties will apply where submissions do not appear to have been filed by the due date, and may be issued where one of the following applies:

payment information is not received as expected on an FPS
HMRC has not been told that no employees have been paid by sending an EPS

No penalty will arise for the first month in each tax year where there is a filing default. This means there are a maximum number of 11 fixed penalties per tax year that can be charged for filing failures.

New employers will not be issued with a penalty if their first FPS is received within 30 days of making their first payment to an employee. But after that, normal penalties rules will apply if an FPS is filed late.

The size of the late filing penalties depends on the number of employees within the PAYE scheme.

Number of employees	Amount of the monthly filing penalty per PAYE scheme
1 - 9	£100
10 - 49	£200
50 - 249	£300
250 or more	£400

HMRC will use the latest information available to determine the number of employees, and the size of the filing penalty for each period where a return is late.

Ordinarily, HMRC will send employers a filing penalty notice quarterly in July, October, January and April, where appropriate. These penalty notices show the amount of the filing penalty for each tax month identified in that quarter. For example, a penalty notice in July will show any filing penalties arising in the first quarter of the tax year - that is, month 1 (6 Apr to 5 May), month 2 (6 May to 5 June) and month 3 (6 June to 5 July). The first notices should be due in January 2015.

Where a return is late for three months or more and the information that it would have contained has not been provided on a later return, a further penalty may be charged. This additional penalty is set at 5% of the tax/NICs that should have been shown on the late return. This will be used for the most serious and persistent failures.

All penalties are due for payment 30 days following the date of the penalty notice. Penalties not paid on time will attract interest. If you disagree with the penalty, you have a right of appeal. Further information can be obtained here.

The next phase of the RTI penalty regime is scheduled for April 2015 when automatic ‘in-year’ late payment penalties will commence. We will detail these nearer the time.

Please contact us for further advice

Filed under: Business, Employers, PAYE

National minimum wage rate from 1 October 2014

Posted by: edwinsmith on August 21st, 2014

There are changes to the national minimum wage (NMW) rates in some categories from 1 October 2014. The new rates per hour are as follows with the current rates shown in brackets:

£6.50 (£6.31) - the main rate for workers aged 21 and over
£5.13 (£5.03) - the 18-20 rate
£3.79 (£3.72) - the 16-17 rate for workers above school leaving age but under 18
£2.73 (£2.68) - the apprentice rate, for apprentices under 19 or 19 or over and in the first year of their apprenticeship

If you have any queries please contact us

Filed under: Business, Company, Employers, Individuals, PAYE

Changing your business address or name? Who and how to notify.

Posted by: edwinsmith on August 11th, 2014

LIMITED COMPANIES – change of registered office

If you are changing your registered office address you need to complete form AD01. This can either be done on line at Companies House or by post. The corporation tax department of HMRC gather data from Companies House on change of registered address and so it should filter through to the corporation tax office. However, it would be advisable to check with them that it has been updated.

BUSINESSES WITH AN HMRC ONLINE BUSINESS TAX DASHBOARD

The dashboard can be used to update three business taxes.

Corporation tax or self-assessment
PAYE for employers
VAT

If you do not have a business dashboard account but you are registered on line for corporation tax, VAT or PAYE then you can use your on line account to register a change of business address. Please note the corporation tax office will not accept a change in the registered office address as this needs to be done through Companies House first as mentioned above. Agents on line accounts do not have the facility for informing HMRC of a change of address.

If you do not have an on line account then you will need to inform HMRC for the following taxes as follows:-

VAT

Complete form VAT484, section 1, and forward to HMRC at the address shown on the form. This form can be downloaded from the HMRC website.

PAYE

Employers should write to HMRC at the following address:-

H.M. Revenue and Customs – Customer Operations Employer Office, BP 4102, Chillingham House, Benton Park View, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, NE98 1ZZ.

Further information can be obtained on HMRC website or please contact us.

Filed under: Business, Company, Employers, PAYE, Self Assessment, VAT

After your staging date and ongoing activities

Posted by: edwinsmith on August 4th, 2014

Declaration to the Pensions Regulator

You will need to make an online declaration of compliance (registration) to the regulator about how you've complied with your employer duties within five calendar months of your staging date. This is a legal requirement to submit this information and therefore you may face enforcement action and incur a fine if you do not provide the information required.

You will need to provide information like the details of the pension scheme you've used for automatic enrolment and how many people you've automatically enrolled into it. Even if you haven't automatically enrolled anyone, you'll still need to complete a declaration.

If your declaration deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, you can provide your declaration on the next working day.

Maintain records

Certain records must be kept about your staff and about the pension scheme. Some of these will be kept by the pension scheme, some must be kept by the employer. These include:

Names and addresses of staff you've automatically enrolled.
The contributions payable to the pension scheme and when they were paid.
Any opt-in or opt-out notices you receive.
Name and address of the pension scheme.
Employer pension scheme reference or pension scheme registry number.

Keeping records is good governance and is proof that you've carried out your duties. It is important that you know what these records are and where to get them from as you may be asked to produce them in the future. You should therefore decide in advance how to store them so they can be easily accessed. These records must be kept for a specified time, which in most cases is six years.

Ongoing tasks

Once your employees have been automatically enrolled, the following activities will become part of your normal regular business operations:

Deducting and paying contributions into the pensions scheme.
Processing opt outs promptly (where applicable).
Processing opt-in requests promptly if an employee chooses to join the pension scheme.
Assessing and enrolling new starters if they are eligible for the scheme.
Monitoring existing employees’ age and earnings to ensure that any changes which affect their eligibility are appropriately dealt with. A table of the main categories of worker and their entitlement can be found on our publications page.

This is the final installment in a series of articles regarding auto enrolment as detailed on our Employer Action Plan. Previous installments detailed below:

1 - Know your staging date

2 -

3 - Develop an initial plan

4 - Know your workforce

5 -Check processes and software

6 - Review your pension arrangements

7 -Communicate to staff

8 -On or just after your staging date

9 -How to automatically enrol your staff

For more information on pensions or to discuss your auto enrolment action plan please contact us .

Filed under: Auto enrolment, Business, Company, Employers

Auto enrolment – how to automatically enrol your staff

Posted by: edwinsmith on July 28th, 2014

In order to automatically enrol your staff into the pension scheme, you'll need to provide the scheme with whatever information they need to get their membership up and running.

As a minimum, you’ll need to provide the following information for each staff member to set up the membership

- name,
- postal address,
- date of birth
- and National Insurance number

Your pension scheme provider should tell you what additional information they will need in order to make en employee an active member and you will need to provide this information to them in writing, which can include email.

If you are automatically enrolling a lot of staff at the same time (at staging or after postponement), it may take the provider longer than usual to make all of them active members, so it would be a good idea to find out how long the provider expects to take creating active membership for your staff after you have given them the information they need.

Before you staging date you should agree with the pension provider the contributions rates and the due dates for payment of contributions. Information on the minimum contributions and due dates for payment can be found at on the Pensions Regulator website

You will also need to find out whether the pension deductions should be made from the employees’ gross or net pay (this will vary depending on the pension scheme provider).

You should also discuss with the provider how they handle ‘opt-outs’ (including how an employee can obtain the opt-out notice), and what the provider will need from you in order to process ‘opt-ins’ and joiners to the scheme.

You'll need to assess the ages and earnings of each member of staff on your staging date and you will have 6 weeks to automatically enrol anyone who’s eligible (or 1 month from the end of the postponement period, if applicable)

Active scheme membership must take effect from the date they first became eligible for automatic enrolment. This means that contributions will be due and you must calculate them from that date. Before the end of the six week period after staff first become eligible for automatic enrolment, you must write to everyone you have automatically enrolled about the scheme, the contribution rates and about their right to opt out.

Tips:

You must not say or do anything that could be viewed as influencing any of your staff to opt out of your pension scheme. This is referred to as 'inducement' which is a breach of the law and could result in fines.
It’s important your staff records are up to date – make sure you hold all their latest information. You should carry out this data check as part of your general preparations for automatic enrolment.
Keep records of who you've enrolled as you will need to make a declaration to the Pensions Regulator on how many you've enrolled into which scheme.

This is the ninth installment in a series of articles regarding auto enrolment as detailed on our Employer Action Plan. Previous installments detailed below:

1 – Know your staging date

2 -

3 -

4 –

For more information on pensions or to discuss your auto enrolment action plan please contact us.

Filed under: Auto enrolment, Business, Company, Employers, Individuals

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