Real time information: late filing reason code

22 May 2014

Some members have advised the policy team that being unable to apply the late filing reason code across multiple employees or even a whole PAYE scheme was causing an administration burden.

HMRC has confirmed they have no objection to employers doing this where appropriate and encouraged payroll software providers to build the function into their payroll software; HMRC provided additional guidance in the technical pack for software developers, which includes the following:

"HMRC has no objection to software developers developing a solution that allows an employer to select a reason which can then be applied to the entire workforce or to multiple employees covered by the RTI submission. While the reason should be reported at employee/payment level, we realise there may be occasions when either the entire workforce or large numbers of the workforce are affected by the same reason, so a solution to apply the reason across multiple employees on a particular submission could be time saving for an employer."

The policy team would therefore encourage members to seek advice from their payroll software providers if this is an issue for them.