First it was announced that late filing automatic RTI penalties would be postponed for all employers until 5 October 2014.
Under an extension of relaxed reporting (announced in August 2014), micro employers do not have to file on or before until 6 April 2016.
Bad news was that the relaxation of reporting did not apply to new employers, who commenced on or after 6 April 2014.
A further announcement made on 9 September 2014 appears to exempt all small employers (1 to 49 employees) from all late filing penalties until 5 March 2015.
Reporting PAYE in Real Time has increased both administrative burdens and costs for many employers.
Bringing in a phased introduction of late filing penalties is a sensible move by HMRC, however the CIOT have lobbied for a permanent end to penalties for small employers.
Unfortunately at this stage it is difficult to see whether HMRC is as yet able to make any use of the information reported in Real Time: it does not appear to have the systems yet to process the information. Is an FPS a document in a PAYE coding dispute?
Neither is it possible to see what the effect of adding yet more automatic penalties are on employers and agents (all of who are voters) and who become increasingly resentful of the authorities when they find themselves powerless under a punitive penalty regime.
Despite the climbdown by HMRC and the new phased introduction of RTI penalties, the problem appears to be in the planning. Our protests fell on the deaf ears of civil servants: no one at HMRC fully acknowledged what it is like to run a small business in the UK.
You could say RTI is “SNAFU” but we have other ideas.
