Although we hope this will not affect any of our customers it is worthwhile noting that HMRC will be introducing fines for late RTI submissions from the 6th of October. It also appears that notices will be issued quarterly, so notices will be issued in January, April, July and October. There will still be fines for late or inaccurate payments. There are guidance notes on the HMRC website but these are of course long and complex.
The RTI submission is supposed to give real time information and be accurate. We need to be kept up to date with an employees situation. Careless or deliberately false information will also be subject to fines. This could happen if somebody leaves or joins but we are not notified. There should not be issues with RTI as long as we play by the rules.
BUT
There have been errors. Employees can be duplicated, tax calculations can be contested, there are problems in the system and HMRC has been struggling to get on top of them. From HMRCs point of view the error rate is very low, and they have allowed the possibility of a ‘reasonable excuse’ for a late submission. We do not anticipate any problems, but we will have to wait and see what HMRC wants to deliver in the New Year, when the first set of RTI fines are posted.
On a more positive note, the arrival of the RTI lead real time tax code changes and a live ‘dashboard’ is well underway. This will be helpful for employees and employers. I imagine we should include the caveat of “as long as the tax code changes are accurate……”
RTI has also helped to fight benefit and tax fraud, although it is difficult to know how big an impact there has been. Overall RTI is probably a good idea for everyone, and we should probably be grateful there have not been more issues.
