There are late filing penalties in place for employers that don’t report payroll information on time. The size of the late filing penalties depends on the number of employees within the PAYE scheme.
| Number of employees | Monthly filing penalty per PAYE scheme |
| 1 to 9 | £100 |
| 10 to 49 | £200 |
| 50 to 249 | £300 |
| 250 or more | £400 |
Payments that are over 3 months late can be subject to an additional penalty of 5%.
HMRC has confirmed that having once again reviewed the effectiveness of the risk-based approach to late filing PAYE penalties, they have decided to continue with their same approach for the 2018-19 tax year. This means that late filing penalties will continue to be reviewed on a risk-assessed basis, rather than being issued automatically. The first penalties for 2018-19 will be issued in September 2018.
This means that penalties will not be charged automatically if Full Payment Submissions (FPSs) are filed late but within 3 days of the payment date and there is no pattern of persistent late-filing. This is not an extension to the statutory filing date, which remains unchanged and HMRC has confirmed that employers who persistently file after the statutory filing date but within three days, will be monitored and may be contacted or considered for a late filing penalty.
HMRC will continue to review their approach to PAYE penalties beyond 5 April 2019 and to focus on penalising those who deliberately and persistently fail to meet statutory deadlines, rather than those who make occasional and genuine errors for which other responses might be more appropriate.
