Employer Annual Returns

6.16 Overpaid statutory payments

If you have overpaid statutory payments, for example, a woman comes back to work early, say in March, and Statutory Maternity Pay is no longer due for that month but it is too late to change the March salary calculation:

• recover the overpaid Statutory Maternity Pay in April (the new tax year)
• do not report the overpayment on the P14 for the previous tax year, but
• do adjust (in the new tax year) the amount of Statutory Maternity Pay recovered and Statutory Maternity Pay compensation to reflect the excessive claim for the previous tax year
• having assessed the right amount of National Insurance contributions due in the previous tax year, make sure that this is reported on your P14s and P35 for that year, sending us an amended Return if necessary.

You must not enter a negative statutory payment on the P14. Any statutory payment wrongly paid is not a statutory payment but an overpayment of earnings, which should be corrected in the same way as any other overpayment of earnings.