What to do when an employee dies
Paying a pensioner who has died
You must make all outstanding payments when someone receiving your company pension dies.
Put the date they died in the ‘Date of leaving’ field in your next Full Payment Submission (FPS), and work out their final pension payment.
Working out tax
Use their existing tax code unless it’s a new tax year by the time you pay them.
If it’s a new tax year and you have not reported their ‘Date of leaving’ (the date they died) on an FPS yet, use their new tax code. Otherwise, use tax code 0T on a ‘week 1’ or ‘month 1’ basis and put ‘Yes’ in the ‘Payment after leaving indicator’ field in your FPS.
Payments to a person who has died are usually made to the personal representative or executor of that person’s estate.
If you pay someone after their death
If you’ve made a pension payment to someone after they died (for example because you were told about their death late), you should get the overpayment back from their executor.
Put the pensioner’s ‘Date of leaving’ (the date they died) on your next FPS, and choose ‘H - Correction to an earlier submission’ in the ‘Late reporting reason’ field.
If you do not know the date they died, put the date of their final pension payment as their ‘Date of leaving’.
Amend the year-to-date figures if you get the overpayment back.
If it’s a new tax year by the time you find out a pensioner has died:
- put ‘0.00’ in the year-to-date figures for pay and tax in your FPS
- send either an Earlier Year Update (EYU) or an FPS with the correct year to date figures for the previous year