Fri, 21 Jun 2013

Thousands of Sage customers sent penalties after RTI blunder

As many as 5,000 Sage payroll customers mistakenly assumed they were part of the Real Time Information (RTI) pilot and have been sent penalty letters by HMRC as a result.

Instead of the P35 end of year submissions for the previous tax year that the employers were meant to have filed they wrongly sent the details in real time believing this requirement for pilot employers fell on them.

Gary Ging, senior business analyst at Sage, told Payroll World: “A fairly small group when they did their end of year submission for 2012/13 did an RTI submission by mistake. That submission should not have been accepted by HMRC, however for whatever reason it was.”

Subsequently, the Revenue distributed P35 interim penalty letters to all the affected Sage customers but has offered to waive the financial punishment if the correct submissions are received by June 25.

Ging added: “We are proactively working with these customers to make sure they are able to make the corrections they need to. Currently all of those affected are on track to submit the information correctly and will have the fee waived.”

Although 5,000 were affected, the number still amounts to less than 1% of payroll clients at the payroll software company, says Sage.

HMRC has provided guidance on its website for any employers affected and states: “We are working with the software provider to identify all the employers who are affected by this issue. We appreciate that employers are still getting used to operating PAYE in real time and that mistakes may occur.”

See also:

• HMRC pins hope on RTI as it misses its fraud target by billions
• HMRC considers coding out limits increase
• RTI: Starter process guidance amended