19th May: Submit your Employer Annual Return, including P14 and P35

As the end of the tax year approaches, your company needs to be making preparations to ensure that all the necessary paperwork regarding Annual Returns for staff are completed.

This formality has to be completed and submitted to HMRC by the 19th of May. 

The basics 📚

The Employer Return consists of two parts; a P35 and a P14.

It has to be done for every member of staff who is employed by you, and on the payroll, at the end of the tax year.

If your company has no employees to report on during the previous tax year, you must still let HMRC know that a Return isn’t due.

That said, even if you’re a Sole Trader, you need to fill in an Employer Annual Return. 

The P14

A P14 details income tax, National Insurance, and other deductions for each employee on your company’s payroll.

The P35

The P35 is a summary of all deductions applied to all employees during the previous tax year.

Even if your company has no employees to report on during the previous tax year, you must still notify HMRC know that a Return isn’t due. 

Deadlines to note 📅

Employer Annual Returns have to be completed online through the HMRC portal.

If you fail to submit them by the 19th May deadline you’ll incur a penalty of £100 for every 50 employees you have.

This is applicable for every month the submission remains outstanding. 

After four months, if the Annual Return still hasn’t been filed, a penalty notice will be sent out on 19th September.

Another will be issued every four months until the Return has been received. 

Making the work easier

While this can be time consuming, there are platforms out there that can help with the initial work of collating the data to complete the Employer Annual Returns.

Expense management software providers, for example, have a built-in facility that enables staff to submit expense claims so that the reconciliation process, and subsequent Return, is a far slicker operation than it might normally be.

These platforms integrate with accountancy software packages to take the hard work out of the process, and are HMRC compliant, so any uncertainty is removed from the equation.

How Expend can help

By using an expense management provider, such as Expend, you can customise the settings to suit your business’s needs.

So, because all the information is in one place, there’s less chance of data getting misplaced and the accounts department spending unnecessary amounts of time chasing up missing receipts or tying up loose ends.

Equally, there’s less admin to manage and the relevant information is passed through to the company accountant in one migration. 

 A final point to note is that Expend’s expense management software is scalable, so as your company grows, it can grow with you.

This takes the hassle of having to go to the time and effort of researching and purchasing new software to match the changing needs of your business. 

For further information on how Expend can benefit your business, get in touch. Our team will be able to explain how it not only helps with your Employer Annual Return, but your wider business too.