Are you filing all your starter and leaver forms online?
A reminder for employers with 50 or more employees
If you have 50 or more employees, you should now be filing not only your Employer Annual Return (P35 and P14s) online, but also all your starter and leaver forms.
Since 6 April 2009, you have been required to send us the following starter and leaver notifications online:
- P45 (Part 1) – details of employee leaving
- P45 (Part 3) – new employee details
- P46 – details of employees starting work who do not have a P45
- P46 (Pen) – new pension details
- P46 (Expat) – details of those seconded to work either wholly or partly in the UK whilst remaining employed by an overseas employer
Penalties
In December 2009 we will begin issuing warning letters to those employers with 50 or more employees who are still not filing their starter and leaver forms online.
When these letters are issued, they will refer to paper submissions made in the second (6 July 2009 to 5 October 2009) and third (6 October 2009 to 5 January 2010) quarters of the 2009-10 tax year.
We will not issue more than one warning letter per quarter to each employer. The letter will only refer to one paper form that is received in that quarter when it should have been sent online. It will not refer to any other paper forms sent subsequently. The letter will confirm the type of form (P45, P46 or any variations of them) and give details of the employee by stating their name and National Insurance number or, where this is not available, their date of birth and gender.
From the start of the fourth quarter of the 2009-10 tax year (6 January 2010) we will begin charging penalties to those of you with 50 or more employees who send us your starter and leaver notifications on paper. Penalties will range from £100 to a maximum of £3,000 depending on the number of paper forms that you send to us.
The first penalty notices will be sent in April 2010. Although this may seem some time away, we strongly recommend that you now make sure that your payroll processes are working properly. Please check that you are already sending us all your starter and leaver notifications online.
