Real time information

RTI (Real Time Information) was piloted during 2012/13, and began its national roll out in April 2013. It is now the method by which employers communicate employees’ earnings and PAYE, NICs etc, deductions to HMRC, unless an exemption from electronic filing can be claimed (see the Setting up a payroll guidance note).

The term ‘employers’ in the RTI context also includes pension payers. Thus, employers who pay their own pensioners (possibly via a special pensioners’ payroll) need to comply with the RTI regulations, as does the DWP. Similarly in the RTI context, ‘employees’ includes pensioners. This includes pensioners paid by their ex-employers, pensioners paid by financial institutions such as insurance companies on behalf of the ex-employers and pensioners in receipt of the basic and additional state pensions and the new single tier state pension.

There was a temporary relaxation from ‘full-blown’ RTI reporting, allowing certain employers to report only on the last payday of each month. This relaxation only applied to existing employers who had fewer than 10 employees as at April 2014, but this relaxation expired at the end of 2015/16. Any new employer, regardless of how many employees they have, has to apply RTI in full, supplying real time information in respect of all payments.

There are penalties for failure to file the necessary RTI returns (see the RTI penalties guidance note).

RTI replaced the previous year-end process and also changed the previous P45 / P46 in-year processes. Using the old terminology, RTI can be described as ‘P14+’ in that the main RTI return contains all the details previously found on the year-end P14 plus extras; the main extras are the details of the payments made to employees in the current pay period.

The main RTI returns are described below.