12 July 2012

Thousands more employers to join Real Time Information pilot

More than 1,300 employers are expected to join HMRC’s Real Time Information (RTI) pilot for PAYE between now and September 2012, the tax authority has confirmed.

Under the new system, employers will tell HMRC about tax, national insurance contributions and other deductions when or before they are made, rather than at the end of the tax year.

It is hoped RTI will make the PAYE process simpler and less burdensome for employers, whilst supporting the administration of the new Universal Credit state benefit, which is due to come into force in October 2013.

Stephen Banyard, HMRC's acting director-general for personal tax, said: ‘RTI is on track and the pilot is going very well. We have successfully received over 1.7 million individual records from 338 PAYE schemes.

‘Following the success of the first pilot stage, more PAYE schemes will join the RTI pilot, as planned, and by the end of September up to 1,300 employer schemes will be reporting PAYE in real time.’

He added: ‘We are also seeing external confidence in the pilot and we've responded to that by offering more large employers, payroll bureaux, new employers and software developers the opportunity to join the RTI pilot or to expand existing involvement in advance of the launch date in April 2013.’

Subject to successful completion of the pilot, large businesses will be required to start using RTI from April 2013. All businesses will be expected to use the new system from October 2013.

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