Making Sure What You Send Us Online Is Correct

14.2 Missing National Insurance numbers

All your P14s must include the right NINO, whether you file online or on paper. You must do all you can to find out your employee's NINO and date of birth.

We will no longer accept the temporary National Insurance number 'TN' plus date of birth plus gender on any P14. If you use temporary numbers, we will reject your Return. So if you have used temporary numbers, you must stop doing so. This includes temporary numbers starting with '00' issued by our Tax Credit Office, as they should be replaced by the correct NINO.

Sometimes we write to you showing a 'temporary reference' using two numbers, one letter and five numbers (for example, 63T12345). You must not use these numbers either, and must find out the right NINO. If you use them, we will reject your Employer Annual Return.

If you cannot find out the NINO by the end of the tax year, you must leave the NINO box on the P14 empty and put the date of birth and gender in the right boxes. This will help us to trace the individual's NINO and to match your employee's details to our records.

On the rare occasions where you cannot find out either your employee's NINO or date of birth, you must leave the NINO box empty and put in '01011901' as the 'default' in the date of birth box on the P14. We will not accept prefixes NC, NK, NO, ZZ, XX and QQ.

From April 2009 we will require all forms P45(1), P45(3) and P46 to include a valid National Insurance and the date of birth and gender, although these proposals have not yet been approved by Ministers. We accept the default date of birth (01011901) on Employer Annual Returns, but we will not accept it for the submission of in-year data.

Here is a list of valid NINO prefixes and suffixes.