Bringing in PAYE improvements

As part of HMRC’s ongoing improvements to our internal processes and customer service, next year we will be moving all of our PAYE records onto one computer system.

This will replace the 12 separate geographical databases that we use at the moment, and means that our staff will have access to all of an employee’s pay, tax, National Insurance and pension information in one place.

The PAYE rules are not changing, nor is the data we hold. But bringing all employee details together on one system will reduce the number of times we have to contact employers or employees – or other HMRC offices – for more information.

If an employee contacts us, we will have all their information to hand, so will be able to deal with their enquiries more quickly and completely.

And increased automation that we have already brought in means that employees’ records get updated much more quickly, so they pay the right amount of tax sooner.

Our changes are also good news for employers, because their employees will be less likely to ask them for information.

All these changes are to our internal systems and customers will not need to do anything different when they contact us.

We will be using our tried-and-tested National Insurance Recording System database to process PAYE. And we will be testing our system changes rigorously before we make the switch. This supports Lord Carter’s recommendation in his Review of HMRC Online Services that our systems should be well tested and robust.