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• Payroll summaries you need to report to HMRC

Payroll summaries you need to report to HMRC

You submit PAYE (Pay As You Earn) reports and requests directly to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) using your payroll software, or HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools.

The submission types are:

• Full Payment Submission (FPS) - sent each and every time you pay your employees.
• Employer Payment Summary (EPS) - to report a reduction in the amount you pay to HMRC or if you haven't paid any employees in a pay period.
• Employer Alignment Submission (EAS) - to align employee records with HMRC records before you submit other information. An EAS is only required for employers with a large PAYE scheme (over 250 employees) or with a payroll administered by two or more payroll systems.
• Earlier Year Update (EYU) - to correct, after 19 April, any of the year to date totals submitted in your final FPS for the previous tax year.
• National Insurance number Verification Request (NVR) - to verify or obtain a National Insurance number for new employees. You cannot send an NVR until you have started to send PAYE information in real time - wait two weeks after sending your first FPS before sending an NVR.

You submit an FPS to tell HMRC each time you're due to pay employees.

Temporary relaxation for some small businesses until 5 October 2013

HMRC has agreed a temporary relaxation of real time reporting to give some extra time to small businesses that pay weekly (or more frequently) but who only run their payroll (or use an agent to run their payroll) at the end of the month. This means that until 5 October 2013, employers with fewer than 50 employees, who find it difficult to report every payment to employees at the time of payment, may send information to HMRC by the date of their regular payroll run but no later than the end of the tax month (5th of the month). Read more about this temporary relaxation.

Relaxation of reporting arrangements for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees

If you don’t have any employees to pay during a pay period you need to submit an EPS instead of an FPS to say no payments have been made in this pay period.

In some cases, you may submit an EPS as well as an FPS where there's a reduction in the amount you pay to HMRC. This may occur if you need to reduce the amount of PAYE or National Insurance contributions (NICs) you pay to HMRC to recover statutory payments, Construction Industry Scheme deductions suffered and/or NICs holiday.

Follow the links below to find out about every payroll item you may need to submit for the most common submission types.

Payroll summaries - Full Payment Submission checklist

Payroll summaries - Employer Payment Summary checklist

Payroll summaries - Earlier Year Update checklist

Even if you use commercial payroll software you can still use Basic PAYE Tools to send certain submissions and requests.

Using Basic PAYE Tools alongside other commercial software