Under Real Time Information HMRC sees your payroll as it happens. We handle the submissions, any corrections and the whole year-end sequence, to the dates they are due.
Real Time Information replaced the old annual return with a running commentary: every time you pay somebody, HMRC is told, on or before the day the money moves. The mechanics are straightforward. What catches employers out is knowing when an EPS is needed as well as an FPS, what to do about a month where nobody was paid, and how to correct something already filed.
We handle the full reporting cycle:
What you paid, to whom, with tax, National Insurance and deductions. Required every time you pay anyone.
Recoveries, CIS suffered, Employment Allowance, apprenticeship levy, or a month in which you paid nobody.
The tax and National Insurance itself, paid electronically. A separate act from the filing, and frequently forgotten.
The route for correcting a closed tax year. Straightforward when done promptly, considerably less so after two more years have passed.
A month with no FPS and no nil EPS, so HMRC estimates what it thinks you owe and charges it. Unwinding an estimate is far harder than filing the return would have been.
A payroll ID changed or an employee re-created rather than amended, so HMRC believes the person holds two jobs and issues a tax code that reflects it.
Submissions going in the following week as standard practice. One late filing a year is forgiven; a habit of it is a penalty every month.
Never claimed, or claimed once and not renewed, because the claim has to be made each tax year and does not roll forward on its own.
A limited company that has had CIS deducted from it but never reported it on the EPS, leaving real money sitting with HMRC unclaimed.
Nobody comparing what was filed against what HMRC's account says is owed, so a discrepancy sits and grows for two years before anyone opens the letter.
The FPS reports what you have actually paid people and has to reach HMRC on or before the payday it relates to, every period. The EPS reports things the FPS cannot: statutory payment recoveries, CIS deductions suffered by your company, the Employment Allowance claim, apprenticeship levy, and the fact that you paid nobody at all in a period. Not every month needs an EPS, but the ones that do need it by the 19th.
HMRC's system sees it immediately, because RTI is real time by design. You are allowed one late submission in a tax year without penalty; after that, monthly penalties apply on a scale that depends on how many employees you have, with an additional charge if a submission is more than three months late. The penalties are modest individually and add up unpleasantly across a year of drift.
Yes, and the method depends on when the error is found. Within the same tax year, the correction is made through the next FPS or an additional one, because the submission carries year-to-date figures that bring everything back into line. After the tax year has closed, the fix is an Earlier Year Update or an additional FPS depending on the year in question. Both are routine when handled promptly and awkward when left.
By the 22nd of the following month if you pay electronically, or the 19th if you still pay by post. Small employers whose average monthly liability is below the statutory threshold can pay quarterly instead. The FPS tells HMRC what is owed; paying it is a separate action, and employers who have automated the filing but not the payment are a regular source of unexpected interest charges.
The final FPS for the tax year, with the final submission indicator set. New tax codes applied from the first payday of the new year. P60s to everybody employed on 5 April, by 31 May. P11D and P11D(b) returns for benefits in kind by 6 July, with copies to employees. Class 1A National Insurance on those benefits paid by 22 July. We run the whole sequence as part of the service.
They change where benefits are reported rather than whether they are. If you register to payroll benefits in kind before the start of the tax year, the value goes through the payroll and is reported on the FPS, so no P11D is needed for those benefits. The P11D(b) and the Class 1A payment still apply. Registration has to happen in advance, which is the part people miss.
We will look at your filing history and your HMRC liability position and tell you whether anything is outstanding. Most employers who ask find at least one thing.