Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Basic PAYE Tools End of Year

I'm still trying out the HMRC's own tax calculator programme and it's the End of the Year. Now I need to print off forms to send to the accountants to check over. The programme doesn't want me to do this and insists that I get ready to submit all the forms as is online. I don't want to do this.

I try to answer the questions truthfully and it throws up an error message asking me to select either Yes or No to a question it hasn't asked me.

One 15 minute wait on the telephone later and a helpful gentleman steps me through 'tricking' the programme into thinking I'm going to submit the forms online, but bottle out at the last minute just so it'll tick over into the new tax year.

Basically I'm lying to the programme that "Hey yeah I'm going to submit the forms" and then telling it not to at the last minute.

Anyway forms filled out; new year started and I check the details. It hasn't changed the tax codes.

What it does say is that I should check my tax codes using form P9X; what it doesn't do is help me in any way to find this form

I then dig around on the HMRC site I find it and it tells me to add 63 to any L codes. Back to the programme and the help bubble over "Change Tax Codes" tells me I should select this if I've received a P6; which I haven't. Choose it anyway however and the option for a P9X now appears. Helpfully it just allows me to make a global change to all L employees by asking what to add... no of course it doesn't it doesn't even show me the existing code to change I have to back out, check the code; add 63 myself, and then fill it in.

Said reminder also states "Please make sure you use the new Taxable Pay and National Insurance rates from 6 April 2012" Okay but shouldn't the software be using those already? How do I check it is? Ah the P9X tells me "the calculator has been updated to include these rates" so why is the calculator (that has been updated) exhorting me to check that it's been updated?

Seriously who tested this software?

7 comments:

walkerno5 said...

I had a beaut submitting employer returns for one of our companies.

We have a company which has no employees but is a trading company that occasionally uses subcontractors.

The company in question needs to be CIS (construction industry scheme) registered to do this properly.

As we have no employees, we tried to tell HMRC not to issue us with employer end of year returns.

However, because CIS is run alongside PAYE we have to do a P35 anyway. Fine, we'll submit a nil return. We have no CIS numbers to report as all of our contractors have a nil deduction certificate.

Unfortunately the online P35 return CANNOT BE SUBMITTED AS A FULL NIL RETURN!

The only way therefore to keep everyone happy is to do your damnedest every year to trick it into accepting a nil return, give up and send a letter to HMRC explaining it and they send a letter back saying, basically "okay then".

It depresses me.

FlipC said...

Makes me glad online filing wasn't around when I had to calculate CIS for a company.

Unknown said...

I would be interested to know how you tricked the PAYE tools as I have ended up in a pickle. I backed up the database before submission, successfully submitted, didnt make a backup and subsiquently lost the database on the latest update. So I thought I would check the backup.. not there (agggghh). Restored back to the last backup and tried to go through the submission stage again but it says that I have already submitted, which is true. I want to trick it so I am back to 2012-2013 year now but cant see how. Help please.

Thanks
Marc

Hamish said...

Yes - please explain how to trick the PAYE tools so I can move into the current year without sending an online return to HMRC (my accountant has already sent a return for me)

FlipC said...

Given this was a couple of months ago and I was walked through it by HMRC staff I'll try to recall.

I answered all the questions it asked; processed all the way up to the final stages; printed out the forms then at the last minute there's an option (I think) that meant not submitting, but just resetting to the next year.

Your best bet is to give HMRC a call and explain what you're trying to do they were very helpful.

Hamish said...

Ah yes - it sort of silently closes the last tax year and moves into the new tax year once you get to the point where it is ready to do a real or test submission. You simply need to say no to doing any sort of submission and you're ready for the next tax year :-)

FlipC said...

Oh good I'm glad that worked for you.