If you run a small company of less than 50 employees then you should have recently received a notice from the HMRC about in-year filing penalties.

You should now be well in the swing of submitting your Full Payment Submissions (FPS) in advance of paying your wages if you look after your own payroll, but so far if you are late for any reason there have been no penalties.  You do get a notice sent via your HMRC secure mailbox but this is a slap is like a  friendly reminder, there are as of yet no fines.

From 6th March 2015 though if you are late making your FPS then you can be fined.  The wording in the notice is you MAY be charged a penalty, so if you have a good reason for late filing then be sure to make sure you let the HMRC know.  For companies with less than 10 employees the penalty will start at  £100, and with 10 to 49 employees it goes up to £200.

To find out more about what will happen if you fail to file on time then take a look at the HMRC website https://www.gov.uk/what-happens-if-you-dont-report-payroll-information-on-time

PAYe Online Webpage

You can also set up e-mail reminders to yourself from the PAYE online service to prevent you forgetting to make your submissions on time.  We all have busy lives and especially when you run a small company these things can be forgotten.

If you are drowning under the administrative burden of processing your own payroll then get in touch.  We can recommend bookkeeping services or admin assistants who can help you out, or even an outsourced payroll solution.  It might just be a Sage Payroll software upgrade you need to sort out your problems.

Call us to discuss your issues and we can recommend a solution to suit your business.

UPDATE – As of Feb 2015

Automatic penalties for late PAYE payments were due to start from 6 April, but HMRC said it will now continue to “risk assess” these penalties rather than issuing them automatically.

Please see this Accounting Web article for more information.