EOY Experiences

payrollpro

HMRC holds weekly conference calls on employer and agent EOY payroll experiences as well as letting us know about the HMRC view of filing.

Now that all employers have to file on line the AAT is interested in having feedback from you so that we can participate in some of these calls and express your concerns, or even pass on good views of the process.

Every year HMRC promise to make more resources available in their systems and more advisers to assist us all when filing so we do need to find out if they live up to or exceed their promises.

Please post brief information about your experiences and if necessary someone will contact you for specific information.

Thanks

Payrollpro
AAT representative on HMRC consultative groups

payrollpro

Ok, I know it shouldn't be me starting this off but here's my experience so far. All of our clients are having their P14/P35 return filed on line using HMRC service and it seems to be working fine for me with just a few more to do but my question is about the ones which cannot be filed.

Typical pub, about 10 staff but 45 employees in total over the year. 8 have no tax or NIC so I'm not filing P14's for them at all but with 4 of those who have I have no NINO or date of birth so the entire submission fails.

We have done a data cleanse with NICO, trawled the old records, tried to get more information out of the old payroll provider, all to no avail. I am awaiting a call from the 2nd tier technical helpdesk at HMRC but currently I am told there is no workaround, no return can be filed unless and until one or other item of data is present.

So, what happens? Is my client in a situation where her 2010/11 return can never, ever be filed? Does she just keep paying £100 a month late filing penalty for ever? At what point will someone decide that the benefit of getting the 33 complete records, for tax and other purposes outweighs the pedantic adherence to the rules?

Out of a total of £22k in PAYE the four errant records have a total of £500 income tax and NIC, a mere 2% of the total, yet I cannot complete the work!

Any ideas?

Payrollpro

zara5034

I am not sure what HMRC think about this but I have noticed that a lot of accounts practices seem to use 01/01/60 as a default DOB? I know that the old default DOB used to be 01/01/1900, but the software seems to get its self in a twist with the NI rate so have seen a lot of 01/01/60s!

I also notice that some employers seem to still use the temp NI number TN DOB and M/F, and in your case the NINO would read TN010160M/F

Do you have any idea on what the current rules are regarding default data?

payrollpro

Zara,

I know you cannot get a P14 accepted with TN, I tried it! There is no rule about default dates of birth but there is a more serious problem with it. Under the DPA it is a criminal offence to process personal data which you know to be wrong. Even accepting the DoB and then entering it on your system or spreadsheet is processing and completing a P14 certainly is.

I would caution against doing that, however, to me there is a way round it but I am not sure I want to go that way. We have to process what our client tells us is the correct data and if my client was to inform me what the four D'soB are then who am I to criticise?

Would that work, or is that equally unethical?

Payrollpro

payrollpro

As an update I thought I would confirm that apart from the failure of the HMRC systems last month no one seems to be having a problem with on line filing this year - so far. I suspect this will change as we approach 19 May.

Can I remind everyone that the concession which allowed filing up to 26 May ended on 31 March this year. The deadline is 19th May.

May I also alert members to an HMRC requirement to submit a separate report of any and all payrolled benefits in kind. Contrary to HMRC's assurances that payrolling was a good way of dealing with BIK's and would save employer time we now find that they want a report, not part of the EOY and not in the P11D.

I have always advised members to enter payrolled BIK's on the P11D in the "Amount made good or from which tax deducted" box but clearly this is not what HMRC wants.

Payrollpro