As an employer you need to send an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) to HMRC by the 19th of every month if you:
- Reclaim statutory maternity, paternity, adoption or shared parental payments.
- Claim the Employment Allowance (for more info on claiming the Employment Allowance please click here).
- Can reclaim Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) deductions. Please note, if you are reclaiming CIS deductions, you will have to enter the amount directly into the P32 before this can be pulled through into the EPS.
- Pay the Apprenticeship Levy if you, or employers you’re connected to, have an annual pay bill of more than £3 million.
You can choose to have your EPS submitted automatically or submit it manually.
Automatically submit your EPS
You can automatically submit your EPS by following these steps:
- Go to 'Payroll settings' > 'HMRC settings'.
- Scroll down to the 'EPS Settings' section and select a date under the 'Submit employer payment summary (EPS) monthly on the' setting.
- Click 'Save'.
Once you've completed these steps, your EPS will be automatically submitted to HMRC on the specified date of every month.
Manually submit your EPS
If you don't want to automatically submit your EPS, you can manually submit it by following these steps:
- Go to 'Reports' > 'HMRC Reporting' > 'Employer payment summary (EPS)'.
- Select the tax year you want to submit your EPS for.
- Click on the Run Report button.
- To review the EPS information you need to click the 'Submit EPS' button. (This won't send the EPS straight away - You will need to confirm submission once you have reviewed the report if you are happy with it.) You can change the month in the month drop down field and view the recovered amounts for the statutory payments.
- You can also export the report to Excel or CSV or download the report to PDF.
Once you've clicked the 'Submit EPS' button, the EPS will be submitted to HMRC for the specified period.
Submitting no payments for a period on your EPS
If you haven't made any payments for a previous reporting period, you need to tell HMRC no payments are due for that period via the EPS. To do this you need to manually submit an EPS and take the following additional steps:
- Tick the 'No payments for period' option. Note - if no payments have been detected for the period, this option will be automatically selected.
- Select the date range that no payments apply for the period. Note - you can only select the 6th to the 5th of a given date range and this date range must be in the past.
- Click 'Submit EPS' button to submit the EPS and report no payments for the prior reporting period.
Submitting periods of inactivity on your EPS
If you're not planning to pay employees in a future period then you can choose to submit a period of inactivity via your EPS by following these steps:
- Tick the 'Period of inactivity' option.
- Select the 'To Date' that the period of inactivity will apply to. Note -you can only submit periods of activity in the future.
- Click the 'Submit EPS' button to submit the EPS and report a period of activity for a future reporting period to HMRC.
To report no payment for a current or previous tax period, a 'no payment for period' must be completed instead on the EPS.
Submitting a final EPS for the tax year
You can manually submit a final EPS for the tax year by following these steps:
- Tick the 'Final EPS for the tax year' option.
- Click the 'Submit EPS' button to submit the EPS and report that this is the final EPS for the tax year.
Submitting a final EPS because the business has ceased
If you're submitting a final EPS and would like to inform HMRC that the business is no longer running a PAYE scheme, you can do so by following these steps:
1. Tick the 'Final EPS for the tax year' option
2. Tick the 'This is the final EPS because the PAYE scheme has ceased' option
3. Enter the 'Scheme ceased' date.
4. Click the 'Submit EPS' button to submit the EPS and report that this is the final EPS for the tax year.
Reviewing previous EPS submissions
You can review previous EPS submissions by following these steps:
- Go to 'Reports' > 'HMRC Reporting' > 'Employer payment summary (EPS)'.
- Select the tax year you want to view the submissions for and click 'Run report'.
- You will then see a list of EPS submissions for the selected tax year.
In addition to reviewing the EPS submissions you can also perform the following actions:
- If there's an error, you will see an 'Error' label in the status column. Clicking on the error label will display the error for any EPS submissions.
- You can download the XML for any EPS submissions that have been submitted, regardless, if they've succeeded or failed.
If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know at support@yourpayroll.co.uk