Setting up a payroll

By Tolley in association with Vince Ashall

The following Employment Tax guidance note by Tolley in association with Vince Ashall provides comprehensive and up to date tax information covering:

Setting up a payroll
Registering with HMRC
Registering for PAYE Online
Running the payroll
Outsourcing the payroll
In-house manual payroll
In-house electronic payroll
Automatic cancellation of a PAYE scheme
Ceasing to be an employer

It may be stating the obvious, but to be an employer signifies that there are employees (or at least one employee). Depending on the employee(s) earnings, the employer may have to make certain statutory deductions from employees’ salaries and wages. Statutory deductions include income tax (also called Pay As You Earn (PAYE)), National Insurance contributions (NICs), student loan deductions (SLD) and attachment of earnings orders (AEOs). These statutory deductions are all made via the payroll.

Registering with HMRC

Even though there may only be one employee, an employer needs to register with HMRC if the employee(s):

•has another job
•is receiving a pension (state or occupational)
•has earnings equal to or more than the lower earnings limit (LEL) for National Insurance
•is receiving benefits in kind from the employer

Registration needs to be undertaken before the first payday. The registration process can take up to two weeks and registration cannot be made more than two months before employees are first paid. The timescale for registering should also take account of the time constraints associated with registering for PAYE Online (see below).

Registration can be by telephone or the internet. The information needed for registration is detailed in Checklist 1.

Partnerships and limited companies need to supply further information, as do other types of organisations under certain circumstances. This additional information and the specific circumstances for other organisations can be found integrated in the registration process on the GOV.UK website .

Employers can register through HMRC’s online services (see below) on the HMRC website . If you already have an online account with HMRC, then it may be possible to register as an employer via the GOV.UK website .

Not all businesses can register via the internet. Those that cannot