Non-standard paydays or moving paydays
In this section:
- Employee payday falls on a non-banking day
- Changing the interval between paydays
- Moving payday to a different day of the week/month
- Extra payments on a day other than the usual payday
- Dealing with 'week 53' payments
Moving payday to a different day of the week/month
Changing the day or date on which you pay your employees can have PAYE (Pay As You Earn) implications if it means that two of your paydays fall within the same tax week or same tax month. This guide assumes that the pay interval - eg monthly/weekly - stays the same. For more information about changing the interval between paydays, see our guide on that topic – use the link at the end of this guide.
National Insurance contributions: no change
Moving your payday only affects PAYE tax, not National Insurance contributions (NICs). You should continue to work out your NICs deductions as usual, using the normal earnings period both for the final payment on your old payday and for subsequent payments on your new payday.
PAYE: check which tax periods your payments fall in
To work out how much PAYE tax to deduct when changing your payday, you first need to check whether your first new-day payment will fall in the same tax period - week or month - as the last old-day payment, or in the subsequent period. You can check this in Part 4 of our publication ‘Day to day payroll (E13)’.
Read our guide ‘Day to day payroll (E13)’
When payments fall in subsequent tax periods
If the first new payday falls in the tax week or tax month that follows on from the one in which last old-day payment fell, then you don't need to alter anything. Continue to operate PAYE as usual.
When payments fall in the same tax period
If the first new payday falls in the same tax week or tax month as the last of your old paydays, then you need to treat the first new-day payment as an extra payment for the week or month in question.
You will need to amend your employee's form P11:
- • update column 2 'pay in the week or month' and column 3 'total pay to date' to reflect the increased pay in that tax week or tax month
- the free pay figure in column 4a should not be increased, as only one amount of free pay can be given in any one pay period
- the remaining columns on the PAYE side of the P11 can then be amended using these updated figures
This amendment to the P11 is a one-off process at the time of the transition between your old and new paydays. For subsequent payments on your new payday, operate PAYE and complete your P11s as usual.
Unfortunately, the process of amending the P11 when changing paydays cannot currently be completed using the P11 Calculator.
How to complete form P11 using paper based methods
