Hi, I hope I am not out of place asking here but where I can get an idiot's guide to RTI. I have been on HMRC site and keep going round in circles. I generally pick up things quickly but RTI is doing my head in. I am a small limited company with no employees, so in theory should be simple. My turnover varies between £20 and £30k so do not want to spend £££'s on software. I first tried the system back in June 13 but had problems with BPT-RTI system, I kept getting an error message when trying to make a submission and for 2-3 months HMRC tried sorting this out. In the end they said delete the software and start again, they did say as I had a enquiry number I would not receive any penalties for not following procedures.
Anyway I have tried yet again and managed to get as far as making a successful submission on 3 March 2014. This was my first submission as I have not made any payments to myself before this.
I included a figure of £7,680 and this has indicated that I need to make a payment of £2223.30 Income tax.
If I had left this a couple of days and included this as month 12 would I not have had to make the Income tax payment (tax code 944L), did the system assume I would make a similar payment in month 12 and therefore assumed a payment of circa £14,360 for the year.?
What do I have to do now, is this when I have to download one of the systems accredited by HMRC to make the payment or do I wait until my next submission and if there is a credit assume they balance each other out.
Am I totally missing the point here?
apologies if this is in the wrong forum but searching the internet has been a bit of a disappointment.
Be careful, if you respond I may have many more questions to ask.
I can't begin to guess why you have ended up with a tax figure of £2,223.30, but I thought I would just recommend Payroo.com to you,
it's completely free and does everything you need it to do for a small business.
It's certainly worth you having a look, see if you can run the same figures as before and if you get the same answer !
By the end of Period 11, on a standard 944L tax code, you are entitled to "free pay" of £8,658,
so you should only pay tax at 20% on anything above that, so there's no way you should be paying any tax at all if
the £7,680 are your only earnings for the year.
Just supposing the calculator assumes you'll be earning £7,680 in March as well, you would only pay tax of
£1,183 for the whole year, so i just can't understand how it's worked out tax of £2,223.30 - I think there must be
something wrong in the set up somewhere.....
Glen - I am at a loss to explain what's going on (I had hoped someone else would jump in and sort it
out for you!).
Don't know what you need to do now - is there a Helpline for Basic Tools - might be worth giving them a ring if there is.
With RTI, you have to submit something for every pay period, either a Full Payment Submission if there is a payment being made
or an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) if there's no payment being made, or if there is some adjustment to the amount of Tax/NI due.
Glen is it possible that you have marked the tax code as a month one? therefore it would be calculating this on a month by month basis rather than an accrued basis?
I do offer payroll at a nominal fee for small companies like yourself with only a director payroll if you want to get in touch to discuss on info@accounting-4.co.uk
How do I check if I have marked it as tax code month one and how do I edit it, it seems that as I have made the submission there is nowhere to edit it in Basic Tools.
Hi, Thanks for that and apologies for not getting back sooner.
Yes that explains the figures but now I could do with someone explaining how I amend this in Basic Payee Tools. - I cannot find any page to edit or is it in the Employee details/PAYE details 'Is this Week1/month 1 basis: Yes
Today I received an email from Government Gateway informing me that according to their records I still have not made any electronic PAYE reports in real time.
See Below -
The law changed last year and as an employer with a PAYE scheme, you should already be reporting PAYE information to HMRC in real time.
We wrote to you in June 2013 and again in September 2013 to tell you that you had already missed a deadline for reporting PAYE information.
According to our records, you have still not made any electronic PAYE report in real time this year.
You need to act now to avoid incurring penalties at the end of 2013-14: either tell HMRC if you no longer employ anyone or start reporting in real time.
This is important as it will stop HMRC incorrectly pursuing you for money. Go to hmrc.gov.uk/act now to find out how to prepare to report PAYE in real time.
If you haven't reported because you havent paid anyone at all, you need to let us know that you dont owe HMRC any tax. If your PAYE scheme has closed or is no longer operating, you also need to tell us.
If since 14 February 2014 you have:
sent us a real time submission
closed your PAYE scheme
please ignore this email.
Okay so I know I made my submissions on 3 Mar 14 , and I have the email from them confirming this, well I think that is what I have done, I know that above they say to ignore the email if done after 14 Feb 14 etc but why are they sending me this email.Surely if this is electronic they should know immediately they receive the submission and therefore not generate such a response to me. OR do they have staff sat there generating these emails based on out of date lists???
Anyway my query is as I have submitted using Basic PAYE Tools Real Time Information, do I need to download and use a one of the HMRC recognised systems such as IRIS or Payroo, if not why are they being recommended by HMRC.
Are the Basic PAYEE tools for one thing and the other recommended software for something completely different .
Any guide in sorting this out would be appreciated.
I would think it needs amending in the employee details on the tax code to remove the month 1 code.
Re the letter- I have had several notices for my clients despite having sent the full payment submissions so dont worry too much about these- I think HMRC have a blip on their systems
As far as I am aware you can use basic tools for the simple payrolls - maybe a call to HMRC would confirm this and also confirm whether there are any errors on your reporting already submitted
Hi Glen. A lot of agent's agree with you and any email like with no reference is suspect and unhelpful. I have today received a reply after reporting it to HMRC.
" Phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk
11:03 (1 hour ago)
to
Thank you for contacting HM Revenue & Customs.
The e-mail you have received was sent from HM Revenue & Customs and is nothing to be concerned about.
If you think you have received the email in error please contact us directly. HMRC contact details are published within the link below:
No explanation and I tend to agree with Sharon that it's a blip and people like yourself were already concerned. You'd think they'd trial these things on a small scale first.
Yes did try a call to HMRC to see if I could sort all of this out,
got a mechanised response
First Off - a message to say if you have received an email etc and you have filed since Feb 14 please ignore the email, so they do admit its a bit weird sending the emails out.
Then a recorded message asking how they can help, please ask a question.
Was a bit thrown back and thinking how I could ask a question on how do I amend whatever from whatever . It did suggest something like ask if you have just had a baby and ..this threw me a bit so I did raise my voice slightly and utter something before slamming the phone down.
After calming down tried the number again ready to ask for help on BASIC PAYEE tools and how to make an amendment.
The helpful response was why not try our help links on the web site -GRRRRR.After holding on and trying to speak to someone they said they were too busy and please try again.
Glen -do you have to register on the basic tools site? If not I will gladly have a look and see if you can amend it on there -I do go on holiday on Sunday for a week though !!
With my usual software I would change YTD figures which upon the next submission will tell HMRC systems that there was an earlier error. I have not long started using BPT and maybe it's because I have yet to submit any RTI reports through this that a delete button (which I am not going to use) is showing.
Most of the following clicks are at the top left. From loading the program - Click the employer name - then Manage Employee's. At the bottom middle should be your name in the employee list - click that. On the left click Employee Payments.
At the bottom of the screen I see: View, Delete and Export functions. As I say, you may not see these as you've taken the process through a full payment cycle.
I think where you're having real problems with HMRC tools, you've got to face starting over again with a commercial product which you don't always have to pay for. Payroo has been mentioned and I think 12Pay may still have a free product.
Thanks for your advice, as it happens I contacted HMRC helpline yesterday and after about 1.5 hours got it sorted.This took three advisers.
Firstly they directed me to where I could amend the Week 1 / Month1 basis to No. This is in Employee details/PAYE details/Change tax Code
I was then told that completing a month 12 EPS would sort the issue out. Eventually realised that as I had already done a month 12 at zero a couple of hours earlier the amendment would not work.
I was given another number to speak to their technical advisors and advised to restore data from a backup.
Tried this and the first one I did restoring from 3 March 14 had the same issue, I then had to go back to August 2013 data and restore from there.This sorted the problem and I then completed an FBS for month 12 paying myself £7,680 and this was not taxed.
Thank you to all who responded.
Just some more questions J
Now that I have submitted an FBS for month 12 what else should I submit?
Have I identified this as a Final Submission, how do I know, it does not indicate this
I haven't done a full RTI year with any software so bear with me if I use your questions as a means of picking up BPT myself. Going off the User Guide there's no mention of a specific Year End routine but the questions at 'Final Submission For The Year' need to be Completed and will be shown under that Menu heading when you have done so.
Should I submit and EPS or FPS for months 1-12
* The top of page 27 of the User Guide says : "If you do not pay any employees during a whole tax month (from 6th of a calendar month to the 5th of the following month), HMRC won't know that, so HMRC will still be expecting you to send an FPS."
If your £7680 consists of several payments then you'd have to reflect those in each months submissions.
At the bottom of page 25 of the User Guide it warns that if the EPS is not sent by 19th it will be regarded as being for the following month. Therefore the EPS function will be of little use for me and you most of this year.
* Page 17 covers this in more detail ..........
Employers who pay HMRC quarterly are required to either send an:
FPS each time they pay their employees EPS if no payment made to employees in a whole tax month
The introduction of reporting PAYE in real time does not change how often you need to pay the deductions to HMRC. The Employer payment record takes information from each employee's pay details and shows how much you need to pay HMRC each month. At the start of the tax year the Employer Payment Record is blank. You must complete it for each tax month. It does not matter if you were not: using Basic PAYE Tools at the beginning of the tax year sending payroll information in real time at the start of the tax year an employer at the start of the tax year
You must still complete it for each tax month. This will ensure that the 'Employer Payment Record' shows the correct amount and HMRC have the same figures. You must create an entry for every tax month even if there is no pay during that period. So, for an employer with no employees being paid until month 3 of the tax year, you must create NIL entries for Months 1 and 2 first."
As you're doing this for your own business, you'll have a good idea if there are to be more payments before April 5th. There are no late filing penalties this year but there are inaccuracy penalties.
