HMRC is advising employers that their employees may benefit from accessing their Personal Tax Account.

By Mark Jones, director of Carmarthen-based Clay Shaw Butler chartered accountants and business consultants.

The taxman at HMRC is advising employers that their employees may benefit from accessing their Personal Tax Account.

These accounts allow taxpayers to view information about their tax affairs and advise HMRC online about changes that may affect the tax they pay.

The services available through the Personal Tax Account include:

• checking income tax estimates and tax codes
• advising HMRC about changes affecting company cars
• using the online forms available to claim tax deductible work expenses or a tax refund
• checking the expected level of their state pension
• renewing tax credits
• advising HMRC of a change of address.

In a recent development, the system for registering for this service has been revised and it is now possible to register using your National Insurance Number and P60 information.

To register on the internet, visit https://www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account

Employers may wish to promote the service to their employees as this should result in fewer enquiries being made by them to their payroll or HR departments

Meanwhile, for those filling self assessment forms, you should already have completed and sent your final report for the tax year ending 5 April 2016.

If you haven’t, you may be charged a penalty and you should now submit your final report as soon as possible, using an Earlier Year Update (EYU).

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Please ensure that only the difference between the last report you sent and the updated final figures for the tax year are submitted to HMRC.

If you are using the Basic PAYE Tools (BPT), you should enter the updated year-to-date totals because BPT then creates the EYU to show the difference.

If you are using a commercial software package please check what details you need to enter with your software provider.

If you didn’t pay anyone in the final period of the tax year then you should send the taxman your final report using an Employer Payment Summary (EPS).

If you’ve already submitted your final report for the year but have discovered an error, you should correct it by sending an EYU.

Again, as above, if using BPT enter the updated year to date figures and if using commercial software please check what you need to enter with your software provider.

If you only forgot to put ‘Yes’ in the ‘Final submission for year’ field in your last Full Payment Submission (FPS) for the 2015 to 2016 tax year, you should correct this by sending an EPS.

Meanwhile, a reminder to employers – Remember that you must report all your PAYE information ‘on or before’ the day you pay your employees.

This includes those employers who registered a PAYE scheme prior to 6 April 2014, had 9 employees or less and took advantage of the temporary reporting relaxation which ended on 5 April 2016.

In other matters, now is the time of year when many of us turn our thoughts to holidays and it is important to get holiday entitlement and holiday pay right.

The GOV.UK calculator has recently been updated and can be found by using the following link – https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-holiday-entitlement

The ACAS website also includes useful guidance on calculating holiday and holiday pay entitlements.

If you would like help with payroll matters please contact us at Clay Shaw Butler.

You can find out more about money matters on the Clay Shaw Butler website (under our news for business section) –

http://www.clayshawbutler.com/news/latest-news-for-business

We have a strong and experienced team with great local knowledge all geared-up to helping you get the very best from your finances – whether that is as an individual or as a business.

We stay ahead of the game by putting great store by continual professional development for our staff.

With Investors In People status at Clay Shaw Butler, we care passionately about making sure our staff have all the tools they need to serve you, our customers.

Weblink –http://www.clayshawbutler.com

The team at Clay Shaw Butler can be contacted on 01267 228500.

The team at Clay Shaw Butler are on Twitter. Look for @clayshawbutler.