Top tips for a stress-free payroll year

New Year's resolutions for payroll professionals

Welcome to 2008! You’ve probably already prepared your personal resolutions and plans for the year ahead. Now how about your payroll resolutions? Are you prepared for the UK payroll New Year on 6th April 2008?

What’s new pussycat?

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With this date falling on a Sunday, all statutory payment rate changes align themselves to the same date. In addition, the Carter 2 report brings electronic In-Year Filing for P45 & P46 into increased focus. Which begs the question: Is your HR team ready to ring the changes?

Here are six great HR resolution suggestions to stick to for a stress-free 2008 in the payroll arena!

Capture birth dates and gender for all employees
For all new employees and submitting documents to HMRC, the requirements for 2008 are to supply the valid National Insurance number of the employee (if they have one) along with the Date of Birth and the Gender. Although date of birth and gender are not actually mandatory until April 2009, now is the time for you to review and resolve any processes where this data is not being correctly captured.
Remember: Although the tax year end submission of P14s can contain a default birth date of “01011901”, where it is not known, this date cannot be used on the P45 or P46!
Complete a P46 for all new employees if they do not provide a P45
Many employers still do nothing if their employee does not provide a P45. This must be reviewed, as the P46 completion is required for all new employees where a P45 is not provided. Employers are no longer required to use the official HMRC P46 form. You can (from April 2008, not before) incorporate the questions into induction forms, documents and even online capture facilities (such as company Intranets), similar to when you need other personal details, next of kin, bank account etc.
If the employee who has not provided a P45 fails to declare the P46 statement, then your company is required to declare a valid statement on the employee’s behalf and should also be able to show an audit trail of attempting to obtain the employee’s declared status.
Accurately complete HMRC forms
Be prepared: HMRC are undertaking a massive data comparison between their NIRS 2 system and the PAYE COP systems. Where employees currently do not have the correct NINO recorded under COP, but a record is identified within NIRS 2, HMRC will post NINO update information to both the employee and employer. This will amount to many thousands of letters being issued in the early part of the 2008/2009 tax year.
Use new electronic exchange message formats (both Internet and Electronic Data Interchange)
If you already have software and process to undertake electronic exchange, you’ll need to be aware that the message formats for 2008/2009 have changed in preparation for mandation in April 2009. Timing is of the essence! That’s valid for both Internet and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The previous message types cannot be used from 6th April 2008 even though they may relate to starters who commenced prior to the tax year start.
Remove local agreements and practices in relation to new starters and leavers
HMRC knows that many employers have been operating arrangements which are contrary to the government regulations, and most of these are ending and will not continue. This typically means that employers cannot use alternate tax codes other than those expected for use when taking on an employee through the P46 process.
For example, an employee who fails to complete the P46 must have tax code BR cumulative operated on their payments. Traditions of emergency code (522L), DO, BR Week 1 / Month 1 or uplifts and application of additional allowances all cease. If this impacts you then resolve to investigate and change prior to the new tax year. The only valid tax code for a box C declaration on P46 is BR Cumulative.
Plan for mandation from April 2009
If you have not yet resolved how you will be undertaking compulsory In-Year Filing from April 2009, then now is the time to plan and agree the implementation process. It cannot wait until 2009. Verify that your software and service will be ready in time, and if facilities are available now (and in many cases they may be), utilise In-Year filing early to reap the benefits and learn the lessons to be learnt.

That’s all folks!

So for Payroll and HR, the resolution for 2008 must be: prepare, review and resolve to be ready to meet all the changing obligations. Have a great 2008!

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