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Employers are set to receive the first quarterly notices under real-time information’s late-filing penalties regime, which began in October for businesses with 50 or more members of staff.
Firms that have incurred fines can expect the HMRC messages from the beginning of February, according to the department. Advisers will not be sent a copy, but each notice will instruct employers with agents to pass on the correspondence immediately.
Employers are set to receive the first quarterly notices under real-time information’s late-filing penalties regime, which began in October for businesses with 50 or more members of staff.
Firms that have incurred fines can expect the HMRC messages from the beginning of February, according to the department. Advisers will not be sent a copy, but each notice will instruct employers with agents to pass on the correspondence immediately.
The notices will be in the form of a letter, setting out all filing penalties incurred for the third quarter of 2014/15 (6 October to 5 January).
Each listed fine will have a unique identification intended to help employers that wish to submit appeals, which can be made on paper or electronically using the Revenue’s online penalty and appeals service.
Further information is available in Employer Bulletin 51. The latest issue HMRC’s bi-monthly update also includes updates on:
- Transferable allowance: the transferable allowance for married couples and civil partners begins on 6 April 2015. The spouse or civil partner receiving the transferred amount will have his tax free personal allowance increased by £1,060. Two new tax code suffixes will be introduced: “N” for the transferor and “M” for the recipient. The new suffixes will operate in the same way as the existing ones. They will not be used on codes before April 2015 so will not be included on the 2015/16 P9 tax codes issued in January, February and March 2015.
- Contracting-out: the temporary scheme contracting-out number (SCON) will not be available from April 2015. Employers should therefore start recording the correct SCON that refers to the scheme of which an individual is currently a member. Employers who are not using the correct number will receive a generic notification as a reminder that they must start recording the correct one.
- Automatic enrolment: research by the Pensions Regulator showed a wide variation among employers in awareness of staging dates - the date employers need to be ready to meet their automatic enrolment duties. Only 43% of those staging between June and November 2015 and 28% of those staging between January and November 2016 were planning for the correct date. The regulator has a staging date tool that employers can use to find out their date. A planning tool is also available which allows employers to view a timeline of what should be done and by when.
- Intermediaries: from April 2015, further regulations will require quarterly returns from employment intermediaries, onshore and offshore, that supply workers without operating PAYE/NICs as the worker’s employer. Affected parties will have to send HMRC reports that contain details of all workers and payments on which PAYE was not operated. The new returns come in to force from 6 April 2015 for each quarter ending 6 July, 6 October, 6 January, 6 April. Intermediaries who have operated the IR35 concession to delay making a final return and payment for 2013/14 have until 31 January 2015 to submit accurate figures and pay any outstanding amounts. The concession operates where a provisional return and payment have been submitted but cannot be confirmed because final figures were not known at the end of the 13/14 tax year. Adjustments should be reported on an earlier year update submitted electronically to HMRC by 31 January 2015. The department will not issue reminder letters.
