Hi,
One of the client who I work for us internal bookkeeper has set up new business and registered new business as an employer. Since has been PAYE registered approx beginning of October he has no employed any staff until beginning of this month (Dec '19).
The first pay date for the emploee it will be 5 January 2020.
Should my client be sending EPS (Employer Payment Summary) for the months when he has not employed anyone which would be the months ended 5 November, 5 December 2019?
or
Can he just submit FPS (Full Payment Summary) for the month ended 5 January 2020?
Thanks for any help in advance.
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Replies (9)
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Once you are registered for PAYE you have to send in an EPS every payday regardless of whether you pay any employees or not.
Once you are registered for PAYE you have to send in an EPS every payday regardless of whether you pay any employees or not.
Disagree.
Most of the time just an FPS is required.
In circumstances when an EPS is required this is not due every payday. It is due by the 19th of the month following.
MoneySoft will allow you to send an FPS for months in which no employees are paid rather than an EPS.
An EPS is NOT required every pay date, an FPS is. EPS are only required when its needed, one of those times, are months when there is no payments.
You need to file either an EPS or a nil FPS since HMRC will be expecting it, otherwise your client could get penalties or specified payment charges which are estimated bills due to no submission in a month. If you or he has good software this takes seconds to do.
In fact any good payroll system should tell you what is needed once you set up the scheme on there.
You have no legal obligation to submit anything until you pay somebody. It will suffice if you submit the FPS when the first payment is made.
In the meantime, HMRC will guess at the employer's liability and add a Mickey Mouse number to the PAYE liability each period, but this will be reversed as soon as you submit the first FPS. HMRC cannot charge a penalty for failure to submit an FPS or EPS before there is any liability to report pay and deductions - they know this, but it's too hard to change their systems to stop it creating phantom debits, because they don't know whether anything has been paid until you tell them.
If you want to avoid having the guesstimates appearing on the client's business tax account, you can submit a nil EPS for the period since registration to 5 January (assuming the first payment is after that date). If you want to do that, I'd use HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools application, which has an option to notify a period where no employee payments have been made (ie, a nil EPS). You only need one nil EPS for the whole period, not one for each month.
You have no legal obligation to submit anything until you pay somebody. It will suffice if you submit the FPS when the first payment is made.
In the meantime, HMRC will guess at the employer's liability and add a Mickey Mouse number to the PAYE liability each period, but this will be reversed as soon as you submit the first FPS. HMRC cannot charge a penalty for failure to submit an FPS or EPS before there is any liability to report pay and deductions - they know this, but it's too hard to change their systems to stop it creating phantom debits, because they don't know whether anything has been paid until you tell them.
If you want to avoid having the guesstimates appearing on the client's business tax account, you can submit a nil EPS for the period since registration to 5 January (assuming the first payment is after that date). If you want to do that, I'd use HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools application, which has an option to notify a period where no employee payments have been made (ie, a nil EPS). You only need one nil EPS for the whole period, not one for each month.
Thanks David
That agrees with what I read on HMRC website, just needed someone to confirm I am understanding their wording.
Best Regards
Wojtek
