PAYE and payroll payment deadlines

The monthly rhythm

Payroll runs on tax months, which begin on the 6th and end on the 5th. So the tax month running 6 June to 5 July is settled by 22 July. Once you see it that way the calendar makes much more sense.

Two things happen every month. First, you tell HMRC what you paid your staff, through a Full Payment Submission. Second, you send HMRC the money you deducted, plus the employer National Insurance on top.

The FPS: on or before payday

This is the one people misunderstand most often. The Full Payment Submission is not due at the end of the month, and it is not due when you pay HMRC. It is due on or before the day your employees are actually paid.

If you pay your staff on the 28th of each month, the FPS must be submitted on or before the 28th. Submitting it on the 29th is late, even though the money to HMRC is not due until the 22nd of the following month.

There are a few permitted exceptions where a late FPS is accepted, such as where an employee is paid in cash on the day and it was not practical to report first, but they are narrow. For almost every employer the rule is simply that you run the payroll before you pay people, not afterwards.

The EPS and when you need one

An Employer Payment Summary is filed only when you have something to tell HMRC that does not fit on the FPS. That includes claiming the Employment Allowance, recovering statutory payments such as maternity or paternity pay, reporting a month where you paid nobody at all, or telling HMRC that no more payments will be made.

The EPS deadline is the 19th of the following tax month. So an EPS covering the month to 5 July is due by 19 July.

The nil payment EPS matters more than it sounds. If you run a payroll scheme and pay nobody in a particular month, HMRC does not know that unless you tell it. Without an EPS it assumes you owe something, issues a specified charge and starts chasing money that was never due.

Paying HMRC: the 22nd

Electronic payments must clear into HMRC's account by the 22nd of the month following the tax month. Cheques must arrive by the 19th, which is the only remaining reason the 19th appears in the payment rules at all.

As with VAT, the money must arrive rather than merely be sent. Faster Payments usually clear the same day. Bacs takes 3 working days. If the 22nd falls on a weekend or bank holiday, the money must arrive by the last working day before it, which is the opposite of how many people assume deadlines work.

Quarterly payment for smaller employers

If your average monthly PAYE and National Insurance liability is under £1,500, you can pay quarterly instead of monthly. The quarters end on 5 July, 5 October, 5 January and 5 April, and payment is due by the 22nd of the following month, so 22 July, 22 October, 22 January and 22 April.

This is a genuine administrative saving for a small employer with one or two staff, and it is worth taking. The FPS obligation does not change though. You still report every pay run on or before payday, you simply send the money four times a year rather than twelve.

The annual dates

The payroll year ends on 5 April, and the final FPS or EPS for the year must be submitted by 19 April. After that date corrections have to be made through an Earlier Year Update or a further FPS, depending on the year, which is more awkward than getting it right first time.

P60s must be given to every employee who was still working for you on 5 April, and the deadline is 31 May. It can be given on paper or electronically, but it must actually be provided rather than simply made available somewhere in theory.

P11D and P11D(b) forms, which report benefits in kind such as company cars, private medical insurance and beneficial loans, are due by 6 July. Copies must also be given to employees by the same date.

The Class 1A National Insurance arising on those benefits is due by 22 July if paid electronically, or 19 July by post. That is a fortnight after the forms themselves, and it is a bill that catches out employers who have never had benefits before.

Where employees have been given shares or share options, an employment related securities return is also due by 6 July. This is one of the most commonly missed filings in the whole system, because the people dealing with share schemes are often not the people dealing with payroll.

Penalties for late RTI submissions

Late FPS submissions carry a monthly penalty based on the number of employees. It is £100 a month for 1 to 9 employees, £200 for 10 to 49, £300 for 50 to 249 and £400 for 250 or more.

Employers get one unpenalised late submission per tax year, so a single slip does not cost anything. After that each late month is charged. HMRC also operates a 3 day easement in practice, though it stresses that this is not a formal extension and persistent use of it is treated as a compliance risk.

Penalties for paying late

Late payment penalties for PAYE work on a sliding scale based on how many times you have been late in the tax year. The first default in a year carries no penalty. After that the charge is 1% of the amount late for the second, third and fourth defaults, 2% for the fifth, sixth and seventh, 3% for the eighth, ninth and tenth, and 4% for eleven or more.

Amounts still unpaid after 6 months attract a further 5%, and another 5% after 12 months. Interest runs daily throughout, in addition to the penalties.

The structure rewards getting back on track quickly. A single late month costs nothing. A habit of paying a week late every month builds to 4% of the annual liability, which on a payroll of any size is a substantial sum for no benefit whatsoever.

What changes in April 2027

Payrolling benefits in kind becomes mandatory from April 2027 for most benefits, starting with company cars, fuel and medical cover. Instead of reporting benefits once a year on a P11D, the value is added to pay and taxed through the payroll each period.

For employers this means the P11D largely disappears for those benefits, but the work moves into every pay run instead. Class 1A National Insurance will be collected in real time rather than in a single July payment, which changes the cash flow. Any employer with benefits should be setting this up during 2026 rather than waiting, because the transition is much easier when done deliberately.

Auto enrolment sits alongside all of this

Pension contributions have their own deadline, and it is separate from PAYE. Contributions deducted from an employee's pay must reach the pension scheme by the 22nd of the following month, the same date as PAYE, and the Pensions Regulator treats late payment seriously.

Re enrolment also has a deadline, falling roughly every three years from your original staging date, along with a re declaration of compliance which must be submitted within 5 months of the third anniversary. Missing the re declaration is common and does attract penalties, because employers assume the original declaration covered them permanently.

Keeping it simple

The employers who never have a problem tend to run payroll on the same date every month, several days before payday, and set a standing instruction to pay HMRC on the 20th rather than the 22nd. Those two habits remove almost every risk in the system.

The annual dates are best handled by putting 31 May, 6 July and 22 July in the calendar the moment the tax year ends, because they arrive in the middle of summer when payroll is the last thing on anybody's mind.

A worked month from start to finish

It helps to walk through one complete cycle. Bridge Street Joinery Limited pays its four staff on the 25th of each month. In June that means payday is 25 June, which falls inside the tax month running 6 June to 5 July.

On 23 June the payroll is run and the FPS is submitted, two days before payday and comfortably within the rule. The payslips go out on the 25th along with the wages. Employer National Insurance and the tax deducted from staff come to £2,900 for the month.

Because the tax month ends on 5 July, the £2,900 must reach HMRC by 22 July. The company sets up the transfer on 20 July so there is no risk of a weekend causing a problem. Its pension contributions for the same month must also reach the scheme by 22 July, so both are paid on the same day.

Nothing else happens that month. No EPS is needed because the Employment Allowance was claimed at the start of the year and no statutory payments were made. The whole cycle takes about twenty minutes, and it is only when it is left until the last day that it becomes stressful.

New starters and leavers

A new employee should be reported on the first FPS that includes them, using either their P45 or a starter checklist to set the right tax code. There is no separate form and no separate deadline, but getting the code wrong means the employee either overpays or underpays, and both create work later.

Leavers are reported on the FPS covering their final pay, with the leaving date included. The P45 must be given to the employee at that point. There is no deadline stated in days, but it should be immediate, because the employee cannot start their next job on the correct code without it.

Correcting a mistake

If you discover an error in the current tax year, the usual fix is to submit a corrected FPS showing the right year to date figures. This overwrites what HMRC holds and the difference feeds into the next payment.

Errors discovered after the tax year has closed are handled differently depending on how far back they go, and generally require an additional FPS for the relevant year. Either way, the sooner it is corrected the smaller the knock on effect on the employee, whose tax code for the following year is calculated from the figures HMRC holds.

Frequently asked questions