Great news for small employers (up to 49 employees): you will not be charged late filing penalties under PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) reporting until 5 March 2015. This change follows a recent relaxation for micro employers (1 to 9) employees which delays penalties for them until 5 April 2016.
Bad news for large employers (50 or more employees) the new RTI late filing penalty system will apply to you from 6 October 2014.
HMRC has published a summary of when penalties apply for small and large employers, in its summary "micro employers" are included as small employers, so in this guidance "small" means less than 50 employees and includes both small and micro employers (1 to 9 employees).
Confusingly the information provided on last month's micro employers extension says that it does not apply to employers who commenced payrolls on or after 6 April 2014. At this stage as far as we can tell the small employer's late exemption applies to new employees - we would guess so.
RTI penalties apply from:
- 6 October 2014 for employers with 50 + employees
- 6 March 2015 for employers with fewer than 50 employees
- 6 April 2016 for employers with fewer than 10 employees
Our summary: see RTI Penalties