As part of the October 2024 employer bulletin, HMRC are reminding employers of RTI data items to report in relation to business tax identifiers. Many employers have struggled to appropriately identify the correct values to be reported via payroll.
Improving data capture of business tax identifiers on the RTI Full Payment Submissions
The HMRC Unique Customer Record programme is claimed to be a building block needed to deliver the vision of a trusted and modern tax administration. “People and businesses are to be able to pay the right tax as they live their lives and go about their business. It should be easy for people to pay any tax due, and for most people the calculation and payment of tax should be effortless. For most businesses, tax should be straightforward and hard to get wrong.”
A unique customer record will benefit our customers’ tax affairs by:
- driving a more personalised, data driven approach to tax administration
- providing better support for our customers’ tax affairs
This is because the unique customer record carries all of a customer’s key information, including the:
- taxes and services they are enrolled for
- money they owe to HMRC
- money HMRC owes them
HMRC is continually looking to improve the quality of the data they receive and hold and HMRC state that employers can help with this by inputting accurate information and completing all the relevant boxes when they complete a Full Payment Submission.
From the following paragraph HMRC have removed ‘must’ and replaced and added with the bold underlined test.
For employers registered for payroll taxes and depending on their business type, one of the following data items *may be entered before submission *(if they have one):
- Self Assessment (SA) unique taxpayer reference (UTR) for sole proprietors or partnerships
- Corporation Tax (COTAX) reference for customers registered for Corporation Tax for example limited companies
HMRC claim that employers should be able to find these data items to complete on the employer details section of your payroll software.
If you do not have a COTAX reference or Self Assessment unique taxpayer reference, once received, enter this in the employer details section of your payroll software. This will update on HMRC systems the next time the Full Payment Submission is sent.
By providing this data it will help increase data collection rates of customer identifiers that will support all HMRC customers (individual or business) to see and manage the taxes and services you are enrolled for in one place and manage your affairs with us more easily online.
Which RTI data items are used for this data?
The RTI data items which are reported on the FPS are:
So data item 141 is used to report the Self Assessment Unique Tax Reference.
And data item 142 the corporation tax reference.
More resources:
The following resources provide more detailed guidance on the RTI filing requirements.
*HMRC changes the October 2024 employer bulletin
24th October 2024 the HMRC made minor changes to their Ictober bulletin article on this subject.
Change made:
Minor amendments made to improving data capture of business tax identifiers on the RTI Full Payment Submissions and PAYE charge queries articles to recommendations rather than requirements.
PAYadvice.UK 25/10/2024