Payroll
a different month than expected by the employer. While the data employers see may be ‘unexpected’, it should not be wrong. Employers may need to look back or forward a month to find where the payment or credit had been used. HMRC said that they were aware that when the beta service was first released, it did not perform to a standard expected by the department or customers. HMRC apologised for this. Over the last eighteen months, HMRC has prioritised ‘PAYE for employers’, and extensive work has been undertaken to fix the problems and make enhancements to make it both easy and intuitive to use. More importantly, it is a service that can be trusted to provide accurate information. What became apparent during the meeting was that some of the issues raised by members had already been fixed, but that users had not been made aware of the enhancements made to the service. Some examples of the issued fixed and improvements made in the last year are as follows. ● The BTA has a clean new look, with a ‘card’ for each tax regime. The PAYE (pay as you earn) for employers’ card has been designed to make it easier for employers to see the amounts of any upcoming and overdue payments they need to make. Subpages have been added to the service to provide more detail of how these amounts are made up and provide links to make payment. Where there are no upcoming amounts to be paid, a link allows an employer to make a payment on account and to pay PAYE bills early if they choose. ● Three quarters of all employers are permitted to pay their PAYE bills quarterly. These employers were seeing upcoming payments marked as overdue when they were not; the service was incorrectly treating the employers as monthly payers. ● Customers reported that some payments and/or some credits were missing from the service; mainly these were payments made in mid-April to clear month 12 of the tax-year just ended. HMRC were aware that this impacted a huge number of customers, as almost every employer pays after 6 April to clear their month 12 charge. This error was largely fixed a year ago, and that resolved over 90% of missing payments/ credits. HMRC expect to make a further
For example, if an employer wants the payment to be allocated to month 12 of tax year 2019/20, the indicator should be entered as ‘20/12’. If, however, there is no charge against which to assign that payment, or if there is no YY/MM indicator, then HMRC’s accounting system automatically allocates the payment elsewhere, in accordance with a long set of rules. HMRC regularly see that customers copy an old payment reference when they make a payment. For example, if the customer wants to pay month 12 of 2019/20, but instead of adding the indicator ‘20/12’ to the payment they use an old indicator such as ‘19/12’, then the accounting system would try to allocate the payment to month 12 of tax year 2018/19. If that month were already paid, then it would invoke the automatic allocation rules and allocate the payment accordingly. This may or may not be to month 12 of 2019/20, as the customer expected. So, HMRC ask that when employers add a YY/MM indicator to their payment reference, could they please use the correct month and year. Employers can use HMRC’s ‘PAYE / NIC current year reference checker’ (http://www.hmrc.gov. uk/tools/payinghmrc/currentyear.htm) – see Image 2. n But… If you are still experiencing problems with the data shown on the BTA, contact HMRC – but the CIPP policy team would also like to hear of any ongoing issues.
improvement before the end of this tax year. ● Customers reported that complete rows of data for some months were missing from the ‘annual statement’ screen and that earlier year update (EYU) details were not displayed at all, even though the totals at the bottom of the screen, included figures for the EYU. ● Customers reported that amounts due on ‘monthly statement’ did not correspond with amounts due on ‘annual statement’, albeit a very small discrepancy. This was due to the service not including repayment interest credit amounts on ‘monthly statement’. HMRC said that as well as fixing the issues listed above, they were still striving to improve the PAYE service. Accordingly, HMRC encourages feedback, comment and suggestions from all employers, to help the department to do this. HMRC thought that there may be some areas where the service still isn’t working as it should. The department is very keen that if employers see data that is wrong (not just ‘unexpected’) then it needs them to report this using the ‘Is there anything wrong with this page?’ link at the bottom of the relevant screen. This is the best way for employers to inform HMRC that the service still has bugs. HMRC is committed to making the service show the correct liabilities, payments and credits. It’s not like a credit card bill Each PAYE bill, whether monthly, quarterly or class 1A National Insurance contributions, has its own payment reference. When a payment is received, HMRC’s accounting system will try to assign it to the month/tax year indicated by the payment reference entered by the employer if present. (The reference is entered as the accounts office reference followed by indicator YY/MM.) the payment elsewhere, in accordance with a long set of rules ...automatically allocates
Image 2
25
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 58 | March 2020
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker