What penalties are applied by HMRC if RTI returns are not submitted on time?

Hmrc have recently provided employers with information about late/non filing PAYE penalties, inaccurate reports and how to avoid penalties in the future.

Penalties are applied when one or more of the following occur:

- The full payment submission (FPS) was late
- The expected number of FPSs are not sent for any given period
- An EPS (Employer Payment Summary) is not sent when you did not pay any employees in any given pay period

HMRC will not charge a penalty if:

- The FPS is late but all reported payments on the FPS are within 3 days of the employee’s payday
- A new employer sends their first FPS within 30 days of paying an employee
- It is the first failure in the tax year to send a report on time (this does not apply to employers who register with HMRC as an annual scheme or have fewer than 50 employees for the tax year 2014 to 2015)

HOW MUCH WILL BE CHARGED FOR LATE FILING?

Number of employees - Monthly penalty

1 to 9 - £100
10 to 49 - £200
50 to 249 - £300
250 or more - £400

If an employer is over 3 months late they wil charged and additional penalty of 5% of the tax and NI Insurance that they should have reported.

Also be aware that if there is more than one PAYE scheme penalties can be charged on each!

Read HMRC users & Auto Enrolment: Manual vs. Automation

Posted byDenise CowleyinHMRCPayroll SoftwareRTI

HMRC Basic PAYE Tools users to get Automatic Enrolment tool from TPR

The tool to be provided by the Pensions Regulator for HMRC Basic PAYE Tools (BPT) users will only handle qualifying earnings schemes. It will not do communications nor will it prepare files for the pension companies. It will be an Excel spreadsheet which will need to be populated each pay period so that assessments and calculations can be performed. The results will then need to be input back into BPT. Then the BPT user will need to log in to the pension scheme's web portal and manually input the figures. There will be extra time required in this process and there will be potential for error.

This combined with the fact that HMRC Basic PAYE Tools does not prepare payslips means that the proposition for commercially available fully integrated payroll and auto enrolment software is much stronger.

BrightPay costs £89 (plus VAT) per annum* and will automatically import the file from HMRC Basic PAYE Tools meaning there is no time involved in setting up.

In addition, BrightPay will include the NEST API before January 2016 meaning NEST registered employers will not even need to log in to the NEST portal when submitting the contribution file each pay period.

* Single employer, unlimited employees. BrightPay is free for employers with 3 or less employees.

Read HMRC users & Auto Enrolment: Manual vs. Automation

Posted byPaul ByrneinAuto EnrolmentHMRCPayroll Software

The Pensions Regulator publishes recent automatic enrolment research findings

The Pensions Regulator has published new research which tracks awareness of auto enrolment amongst employers and intermediaries and how they are preparing to act.

The Key Findings from the Intermediaries survey were:

- There was almost universal awareness of auto enrolment amongst all types of intermediaries (between 97% & 98%), with bookkeepers similarly high (94%).

- Payroll administrators reported a significant increase in their ability to answer clients questions, with 54% (up from 33%) believing they are fully able to answer all queries.

- There are increasing proportions of intermediaries planning to act on behalf of their clients, as opposed to taking more passive roles of providing information or technical advice (payroll administrators 71%, IFAs 53%, accountants 44% and bookkeepers 42%)

- The vast majority (96% or more) of accountants, bookkeepers and payroll administrators planned to provide a service to micro employers, while most IFAs did (78%).

The Key Findings from the Employer Survey were:

- Nine in 10 employers staging between August and November 2015 had commenced for automatic enrolment.

- 7 – 10 small employers expected to rely on an adviser to provide practical assistance with automatic enrolment.

- Most (79%) employers staging in 2015 knew their staging date. A lower proportion (29%) of employers staging between January – November 2016 knew their staging date, similar to the (30%) of employers staging between January - April 2017 who knew their staging date.

- Awareness of automatic enrolment increased significantly amongst both small and micro employers.

Posted byDenise CowleyinAuto Enrolment

The Pensions Regulator issues warning to SMEs

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has issued a stark warning to hundreds of thousands of small employers, after new research has shown that almost two thirds of SMEs do not know the exact date they need to comply with new workplace pension duties.

Research is published twice a year by the Regulator and tracks awareness of automatic enrolment among employers and intermediaries. Encouragingly, results of the survey show that the majority of employers due to stage between now and November 2015 have started preparing and are aware of their staging date, however awareness amongst those due to stage in 2016 and beyond drops significantly.

Speaking on the subject, Charles Counsell, executive director of automatic enrolment at TPR has said, ‘The challenge of ensuring 1.8 million employers meet their duties by April 2018 is significant and the research shows many employers are still not preparing early enough. We continue to develop new tools on our website to simplify the process for employers and we are using a diverse range of communications to reach out to employers, but my message to employers remains clear: start getting your plans in place or you risk a financial penalty.’

The Pensions Regulator advises that employers should start preparing for automatic enrolment 12 months ahead of their staging date - the date set in law for when their duties will start. Failure to meet auto-enrolment duties could ultimately lead to employers receiving a fixed penalty notice, and the possibility of escalating penalties applied per day for failing to comply with a statutory notice.

Posted byVictoria ClarkeinAuto Enrolment