Agent Questionnaire

For payroll bureaux and tax agents who advise employers on issues relating to PAYE and benefits and expenses to be returned on form P11D

This questionnaire is running alongside a study of the practical approach to the payrolling of benefits in kind used by employers who on a voluntary basis are taxing benefits & reimbursed expenses through the payroll

Q1. Do you currently have any clients that tax expenses and benefits through the payroll and where you have worked with them to design or implement the payrolling arrangements?

Yes
No If No go to Q19

Q2. If yes, please list the expenses and benefits that you have been involved in helping one or more of your clients to tax through the payroll?

Q3. For each expense and benefit that you payroll for clients, please:-

(a) Describe the annual cycle of calculating the amount of the benefit to be put through the payroll, actually taxing it each pay period, making any adjustments in-year and at the year-end, and processes for finishing the tax year:

(b) Indicate any areas of difficulty e.g. establishing value to be put through payroll in time for a particular pay period:

(d) Describe any tweaks that you make to strict method of calculating taxable benefit or expense for each tax year in order to ease or smooth the process of payrolling:

(e) Indicate whether your clients use any estimates? Yes
No

If so, for what and how/when do you or they adjust?

Q4. Are there any items that are payrolled by at least one of your clients that you find
particularly tricky to handle? Yes
No

If so, please explain the problems that you have come up against and describe any solutions that you have applied

Q5. Are there any expenses payments or benefits that you and/ or any of your clients
have rejected as being too difficult or time-consuming to tax through the payroll? Yes
No

(a) If so, please specify the particular expenses and benefits and describe the areas of difficulty:

(b) Please tell us what changes you think would need to be made to make it easy to payroll any items listed under (a)?

Q6. Please tell us how you payroll benefits/expenses provided after the payroll run in month 12 (unless you have covered this earlier)?

Q7. What information about payrolled expenses and benefits do your clients provide to HMRC at the end of the year?

Q8. How do you provide the information referred to in Q7?

Q9. How do your clients calculate and account for Class 1A NIC on payrolled benefits? Do they do anything different for Class 1A than they would if not payrolling?

Q10. How do your clients account for Class 1 NICs on
(a) those benefits and (b) those expenses that attract them?

Is this any different with or without payrolling?

Q11. How do you manage in year benefit changes?

Early in the year

Mid-year

Late in tax year - month 11 or 12

Q12. What difference does it make to your practice if the change would result in a large fall in take home pay?

Q13. Do you operate any lower limits for your clients below which you do not allow take
home pay to fall e.g. no less than x% of gross salary for that period? Yes
No

If yes, what are they and what are your processes for dealing with it?

Q14. How do you handle leavers, for example if there are benefits/ expenses that have not been payrolled before an employee leaves?

Q15. How do you help your clients to handle/track employees
under/around the £8500 threshold (normally part-time employees?

Q16.What other types of "exceptions" have you identified?

Q17. What are your in-year and end of year processes for dealing
with any such exceptions?

Q18. When you first helped your clients to bring in payrolling, were there any teething
problems? Yes
No

If so, what? And how were they resolved?

Q19. Would you recommend payrolling to your clients? Yes
No

Please explain why

If you are happy to be contacted about this questionnaire, please provide your contact details:

Name:

Job title:

Email:

Telephone:

In accordance with access to information law, primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), HMRC may receive requests to publish or disclose information provided by you. If HMRC does receive such a request, it will contact you for your views before making any decision on disclosure. HMRC generally considers itself to be statutorily barred from disclosing, in response to an FOIA request, information that would specify the identity of the person to whom the information relates or would enable the identity of such a person to be deduced.

Thank you very much for taking the time to complete this questionnaire.