HMRC Deadlines – Why Bother?
Another important accounting milestone has passed within our yearly calendar….
Nope, not simply the end and start of the tax year…… We are talking about the ‘only-hear-about-it-if-you-work-in-payroll’ milestone of the ‘End of Year Payroll’ that has to be run and submitted to HMRC by the 19th of April each year….
Hopefully, to our clients, it is a smooth, ‘of no concern’ thing, which goes on in the background, and the first thing they know is when we give them access to their P60 documents…
For us, it is more detailed and frantic! Checks, reconciliations, submissions to HMRC (unless the chosen software does it on behalf of the client 😊) and granting access to P60s……
We know there will be at least one of you out at there yawning
‘Oh god, WHY BOTHER?’
Well, putting it simply, if you don’t do this small step to finish off one tax year, you cannot move onto the next tax year…..
However, in these current, very different times, we ask you to think of it in ANOTHER WAY…..
Not to think of it as the
‘Pain in the whassit thing to do’
Or the
‘Don’t want to tell HMRC what we do’
We ask you to think of it in this way…
FURLOUGHING, right? Yep, that buzz word of today – FURLOUGHING…..
Why are we saying that, now? Well, the key to being able to make a claim for a furloughed worker is that they were employed and on a business’s payroll for the 19th March (was previously the 28th February….)
And how do HMRC know who was included in a payroll on the 19th March? By which employees were paid and included on the Real Time Information (RTI) submission, run as part of the payroll process, during March….
We know, we get it, HMRC deadlines do sometimes feel like a grind, a hazard on which to trip, something to mess up your days…..
However, the example of the Corona Job Retention Scheme (yep, furloughing to you and us) is wholly dependant on business’s having played ball with their deadline requirements.
One example of where playing ball with HMRC will pay you dividends…
So, WHERE ARE WE WITH FURLOUGHING?
Simples. The claim portal has been released and seems, at this point to be running smoothly….. With 67,000 claims having been logged in just half an hour… Including a few we ran for our clients in there 😊
Some tips though……
CLAIM CALCULATIONS
🤓 We recommend you use the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme calculator to calculate EXACTLY how much to claim for each employee… Find this here:
🤓You will need several bits of information before you can carry out a calculation e.g. claim period, employee pay dates, their pay rate etc etc
🤓We suggest you take a screen shot of EACH calculation and save this for future reference, as evidence, should it be needed
🤓A word of warning, the calculator will, currently, only work for employees that have weekly or monthly pay…. If there is any element of variable, hourly pay, you will need to calculate this manually…. Go to the “Employees whose pay varies and were employed from 6 April 2019” section of the recently updated guidance to find out how to do this:
THE CLAIM
🤓 The online claim portal can be found via this link:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wages-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme
🤓 Don’t forget to read through the INFORMATION REQUIRED at the top of this guidance, BEFORE you start a claim…. If you need to amend any of the information you put in, you will have to go back to the beginning and re-enter…
🤓Your claim will be for ALL of the employees you have furloughed… So we recommend keeping EVIDENCE of how you arrived at the claim figure….. Go back to that tip above for a screen shot of each employee’s calculation and keep them ALL in a safe place, just in case.
🤓HMRC will ask you to confirm that you understand that they CAN CHECK your claim and MAY REFUSE or RECOVER PAYMENT if they feel it is not a genuine claim….. (Goes back to what we were saying about meeting those HMRC deadlines a bit, doesn’t it?)
Of course, we have a strict procedure within our business, to ensure that what we claim on behalf of our clients, is calculated, evidenced and matches any payroll processed. We strongly suggest you do the same, just to cover your business’s back.
Remember, HMRC have the right to ask you to evidence your claim. They are giving money away after all. So EVIDENCE, EVIDENCE and MORE EVIDENCE for your claims….
If you need any help, or have any questions, do just drop us a line, always happy to help – you can find our details on our contacts page:
Stay safe people, stay home, save lives 😍😍😍