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HMRC finally tackles RTI annual scheme backlog

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30th Jul 2013
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Limited company contractors who want to pay themselves annually instead of monthly under the Real Time Information (RTI) regime can now proceed with HMRC.

Up until now the Revenue has been unable to deal with requests it received from employers wanting to change the status of their PAYE schemes to annual.

At the end of April, when RTI went live, HMRC stopped employers and their payroll agents from switching their pay cycles to “lessen the administrative burden” of RTI. By May HMRC revealed that the delay had been caused by a software glitch.

However it announced last Thursday that a “fix” was now in place and that it would accept all the requests from employers that have been submitted to date. It will not, however, notify them that the change to annual has been made.

Once a business is registered as annual scheme, an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) is not required for the 11 months of the tax year where no payments are made to the employer’s employees.

If the employer pays one (or more) of its employees for more than a single month in the year, HMRC will automatically cancel the annual payer status for that year, as well as following years.

This information has been transferred to a new accounting system and is recorded as the annual payment/filing month.

The Revenue will then issue a letter to the employer advising the cancellation status and the debt management processes will revert to expecting filing and payment on a monthly basis.

To qualify for an annual scheme HMRC has stipulated the following conditions:

  • all the employees are paid annually
  • all the employees are paid within the same, single tax month
  • the employer is only required to pay HMRC annually

If an existing annual employer changes the date/month of payment to the employee, they should complete a Full Payment Submission (FPS) for the month that the payment is made to the employee.

On receipt of the FPS HMRC's systems will change the annual payment/filing month over to that month.

For the full RTI annual scheme guidance, visit the HMRC website.

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Replies (9)

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Euan's picture
By Euan MacLennan
30th Jul 2013 13:22

Yesterday?

"However it announced yesterday that a “fix” was now in place..."

You are behind the times - it was last Thursday, 25th July, as I mentioned on Saturday.

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By Robert Lovell
30th Jul 2013 14:16

Re. Euan

Thanks for pointing that out Euan - I'll amend the article to say "last Thursday"

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By jon_griffey
31st Jul 2013 16:12

Not far enough..

 "It will not, however, notify them that the change to annual has been made."

So - we have no way of knowing if the employer has been properly logged as an annual scheme until the client receives a threatening letter from HMRC.  Surely it is not beyond the wit of HMRC to allow us as agents to log in and flag clients as annual schemes, or at least view their status? 

I would suggest that with the vast number of one-man service companies around that probably half of all payrolls fall into this category.

And why exactly must an employer file in the same month each year?

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By awdeek123
05th Aug 2013 10:58

Basic Tools and separate registration for annual scheme?

This question has been discussed before on AW and elsewhere but never resolved as far as I know:  I set up and processed an annual payment using HMRC Basic Tools but don't know if I should also 'register' as well or is registration deemed to be part of the Basic Tools process?

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David Ross
By davidross
05th Aug 2013 11:20

Please excuse my dumbness

I have been holding back applying for Annual Payment for a number of schemes. Something tells me there was an application form but I cannot find reference to this - should I just send letters (or a letter and a list)? and should I send it to Newcastle upon Tyne?

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By Briar
05th Aug 2013 11:34

Bit Late!

So having changed what were previously annual schemes to monthly ones (to comply with RTI threats, etc), and made the filings, I assume that we cannot change them until next year! Is there a way of cancelling the previous RTIs for this year and changing them to Annual ones? Why didn't HMRC think of this before the RTI scheme went live in April? Just incompetence as usual , I suppose.

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By Ian McTernan CTA
05th Aug 2013 11:49

Another fine mess...

Gee thanks HMRC- so we have all now filed three months of the current year, paying all those directors on a monthly basis, and now you tell us we can finally switch them to what we wanted in the first place- but only if we haven't made payments!

Total rubbish from HMRC, whatever happened to the precious RTI liaison committee which was supposed to be acting in our interests and helping HMRC not make such idiotic decisions.

No notification that the employer is now on the annual scheme- that's just lazy and pathetic, roll on a couple months from now when the threatening letters go out to clients as we don't know whether the registration worked or not...

Oh and Briar, they were well aware of the potential problem but were too busy with the RTI liason committee patting themselves on the back for being bale to deal directly with large companies on issues from the pilot (yep, surely having a direct phone line to resolve issues with your very own support techs is representative of the real world for most of us....) to consider the few hundred thousand one man companies that wanted to register as annual schemes, then the flood came, so they stopped you from being able to do it, and now they won';t tell you when you do do it.

Who exactly do I charge for all this additional work?  As usual, the little guys got ignored and are left to clean up the mess.  Maybe one day one man practices, etc will get some representation on these committees so they don't consist entirely of each other's mates and some real world can be injected into proceedings.

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By jon_griffey
06th Aug 2013 11:17

Annual schemes

 

In the pre-RTI days you could phone HMRC at any point in the year and ask to be put on an annual scheme and that would stop monthly reminder from being issued.

I presume that this is the case with RTI.

We have just sent a long list of clients to HMRC to be made annual schemes.  However we won't know if this has been actioned etc.  I suppose the first we will hear of it will be when clients start ringing up about getting threatening letters.

We really need to be able to 'self-serve' this.  Most payrolls these days are OMB threshold payrolls and of no interest to HMRC.

 

 

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David Ross
By davidross
09th Oct 2013 17:36

Good response from HMRC

Despite saying they would acknowledge applications, I got a nice letter listing the schemes for which Annual Accounting has been approved - thankyou to "D Ford Administrative Officer" in Newcastle

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