15 April 2024

Pay As You Earn (PAYE) is ingrained in almost everything we do as payroll professionals. It is now the cornerstone of how we pay individual taxes while in employment. It can sometimes be hard to imagine a time when it wasn’t in place.

But it has been around for some time now, 80 years to be more specific. Introduced in the 1944 Budget, it was brought in to assist with the collection of taxes when the country's finances were stressed during World War II.  

Since then, we have had many innovations and additions to the system; National Insurance expansions, RTI, expenses and benefits reporting and the upcoming mandating of payrolling benefits. It is a basis that seems like it will stay for a while to come.

If you want to take a trip back to the start, below is a video showing how the government advertised the new system to taxpayers all the way back in 1944.

Government broadcast about paying taxes (1944) (youtube.com)

Do you see any major changes to how we collect taxes in the UK, or do you expect we will be celebrating 100 years of PAYE in 2044?


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