Reply to: RTI Commenth (Hold me I'm scared)

[BunnyBomb]

I've been exploring the idea of 'submitting an entire year in advance' a little further...

The rules currently state you need to do an RTI submission on or before the payment date. I've done some research and I cannot find anywhere that places a limit on how far in advance you can prepare or submit an RTI submission. So it appears, on the face of it, that you could indeed prepare an entire years worth of submissions (say) this month and submit them early.

This could work for people who have a very simple PAYE arrangement (i.e. 11 months of no payments, followed by 1 payment of an annual salary - or 12 months of a fixed never changing amount like myself).

I thought I should report, I finally got the opportunity to test the above theory...

I am delighted to report that you can submit far in advance!

I've managed to submit all my FPS submissions for the entire tax year in under 20 minutes.

Job done



PS: Not meaning to take all the credit but...I ended up spending about 8 hours, over the course of April, on the phone with the HMRC tech team explaining that they had a major flaw in their code. The flaw creates a miss redirect, which only affects Windows users doing a custom install with a shared data folder. It's nice to see they have now put a workaround up for the issue, but yeah it was blocking me for weeks, so have only just now been able to try the 'submitting in advance' folder...I really should send them a bill...

[BunnyBomb]

Still no response...

I think it's time to call this a bust.

I've been trying for days now to submit my first FPS and it still just sits there with "Initialising submission". No response from the service at all, not even a "bugger off" response.

So...I got a little desperate and deployed a packet sniffer to tell me what's being sent / received in the submission process. To sum it up in plain english, the server is going "ummm...*hic*...who are you again?"

The online services status page says this though:

Sorry - HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) are currently experiencing problems with the service you have requested. HMRC are dealing with the problem and hope to have this service available again shortly, so please try again later.

[inniAccounts]

Ahh.

Yes.

Option B please.

[captainham]

Fatal floor

Fatal floors AND rouge FPS?! Sounds hellish, next you'll be telling us there are fatal flaws and rogue FPS too, then we are all truly doomed!

[Archangel]

I've done an ffps, and fps and an eps today, they all seem to have been received ok by hmrc.

[inniAccounts]

Fatal floor.

We can't call them.

They're on strike.

[inniAccounts]

Everything's working ok for us - we're getting successful submissions back within a second or two...

We've had to fix a couple of DQ issues and we've got one rouge FPS that's refusing to go, but we're about to call HMRC to resolve.

[davehardyuk]

Initialising submission

I've been getting the "Initialising submission" status when trying to submits last weeks payroll. Have tried Saturday, Sunday and just now (8:30am Monday) - it's ridiculous!

I thought I would give the PAYE Tools RTI a go today, for my payroll this week, but so far there is no response trying to complete the submission. It has sat there saying "Initialising submission" for the past hour.

Do you reckon HMRC forgot to turn the server on? :P

Edit: Aha answered my own question. I just found this notice on the HMRC service issues website, posted on 30th of March:


Also was wondering....since the rules say you can submit the FPS record before the physical payment date, what's stopping people from creating their entire years worth of entries like....today....and submitting the lot in advance? I was actually considering this. I tried looking around to see if there are rules preventing this but can find none.

[Swamp Thing]

Success, but more questions..

Just submitted my er, submission for April. It went through first time, I nearly fell off my seat. Took a couple of screenprints just in case things end up not going to plan at HMRC's end.

Has anyone read forward to pages 17-19 of HMRC's RTI user guide - Recoverable amounts and Additional employer payments to HMRC. The guide says do this step after 5 May but before 19 May. Questions:
- Why? This seems a bit paper and glue to me.
- You have to do this step even if you have no recoverable amounts or additional payments to make. If you don't, then why? Surely this was captured in the FPS in the previous month?
- The guide implies that this is a one-off task (it refers to Tax Month 1, but no subsequent months). Is it? If so, why?

Why, HMRC, why, why????

[BunnyBomb]

Submitting in advance...

I've been exploring the idea of 'submitting an entire year in advance' a little further...

The rules currently state you need to do an RTI submission on or before the payment date. I've done some research and I cannot find anywhere that places a limit on how far in advance you can prepare or submit an RTI submission. So it appears, on the face of it, that you could indeed prepare an entire years worth of submissions (say) this month and submit them early.

This could work for people who have a very simple PAYE arrangement (i.e. 11 months of no payments, followed by 1 payment of an annual salary - or 12 months of a fixed never changing amount like myself).

The only thing that may prevent this is the 'date of creation' that is sent with every submission you make. HMRC might flag errors if the date of creation of many submissions is too far ahead of the physical payment. We'll only know when someone tries it though, so I'll give it a go once the system is back up (still not responding today). We'll call this Plan A.

Plan B : If submitting too far ahead doesn't work however, I can already see a potential work around. I have discovered that the "datecreated" field lives inside the database table called "bptrti_submissiondirtydata", and (since HMRC have kindly used a python database) is quite easily editable using the SQLite Database Browser.

Ok I probably lost some people there....

Basically, if you really wanted to, you could create all your submissions for the year using HMRC PAYE Tools RTI, then tweak the creation date to a point closer to the payment date and 'presto' you'd fool their system into thinking you had created your submission in the month it was due....only do it now, many many months beforehand. HMRC may question how you managed to invent a time machine but...the idea is there. I've checked all the other tables and the 'datecreated' field is not repeated anywhere else, so it's a simple edit. (PS: my GOD this thing is badly coded!! Are you kidding me with the data duplication!?!? And who the hell is this programmer spamming celery test data everywhere...aaand I'm back.)

I'm still hopeful that Plan A is do-able, without having to tweak creation dates, so I'll go right ahead and try it, to see if something blows up.

[tractor]

...

Service update from: HM Revenue & Customs



I guess the delay is backlog clearing.

Outside of the RTI argument, this is what I have been hearing since I started work in 1972. No change there then

[BunnyBomb]

No response

I thought I would give the PAYE Tools RTI a go today, for my payroll this week, but so far there is no response trying to complete the submission. It has sat there saying "Initialising submission" for the past hour.

Do you reckon HMRC forgot to turn the server on? :P

Edit: Aha answered my own question. I just found this notice on the HMRC service issues website, posted on 30th of March:

Delay in receiving online acknowledgements for PAYE End of Year and In-Year submissions from Wednesday 3 April 17:00 to Tuesday 9 April 18:00

Also was wondering....since the rules say you can submit the FPS record before the physical payment date, what's stopping people from creating their entire years worth of entries like....today....and submitting the lot in advance? I was actually considering this. I tried looking around to see if there are rules preventing this but can find none.

[inniAccounts]

Service update from: HM Revenue & Customs

Saturday 6 April 06:00 – Tuesday 9 April 18:00

The PAYE Online service will be available from 06:00 on Saturday 6 April, however following the scheduled upgrade you may experience a delay in receiving your online acknowledgement. Your acknowledgement will be sent by Tuesday 9 April.

Direct debits created after 06:00 on Saturday 6 April can be viewed after 7:30 on Monday 8 April.

I guess the delay is backlog clearing.

[ratewhore]

Just a thought: when we all clamour to submit our FPS's on Monday, will the Govt Gateway hold up? Or will it fall over à la 31 Jan SA submissions?

No response from the gateway this morning, so I can't submit my end of year forms. Looking at the guidance for downloading the RTI version it says this;

- Your Employer Annual Return is due by 19 May 2013, but HMRC recommends that you send it as soon as you can because you must do this before moving onto steps 4 and 5

- Step 5 - download the RTI version of the tools for 2013-14 It’s important that you download this version before you pay any employees after 6 April 2013. But it's also important that you have completed your Employer Annual Return before you do so.

So I can't submit my return because the Gateway is not responding. That's Ok though because I have until the 19 May. But wait, I can't pay myself until I download the new version but I can't download and use the new version until I have submitted the return.

Only HMRC...etc...etc...

[inniAccounts]

Oh FFS. What a predictable response to change.

I'd expect that claptrap to grace the pages of the Mail, not the Telegraph.

This response is not surprising in the slightest: the warning signs were there. Look at AccountingWeb posts, look at the response from the Chartered Institute of Taxation… appalling.

I blame any potential backlash squarely on accountants, not HMRC. They've been doomsaying for months as they stubbornly resist change and the media has picked up on their rhetoric alone. Accountants are the antithesis of progressive. Look back at some of the posts on this forum recently: a £400pa increase in payroll charges to cover RTI? Get a grip. Move from monthly to annual payroll because it's easier for the accountant? Come on, that's not client-centric. Even a more progressive online firm is jumping on the bandwagon with talk of heading into a "disaster zone". I find it disappointing to hear this apocalyptic comment from them (or their PR).

For the most part, RTI will make accountants lives easier - it's going to remove year processes and make the starter/leaver process easier too. If they're already using payroll software then there will be very little change indeed. Just another button press (that's £400 please!). There are cases where RTI will get in the way but these are marginal - however the flames of these cases are being fanned by accountants in an attempt to discredit RTI in its entirety.

If anyone's interested in HMRC's impact assessment, check out this link. They've recognised that some people (e.g. 'digitally excluded') won't be able to use RTI and have formulated a pragmatic response:

And where HMRC is satisfied that this is the case employers will be offered the option to file their PAYE data through non-RTI channels until April 2014, and to file RTI on paper from that date. HMRC's intention is that this option will remain available to digitally excluded employers for three years from April 2014. During this period HMRC will support this group to move onto a digital channel.

So that's killed that argument, then.

Anyhow, back to the topic: given most people on these forums are IT folk, we all appreciate that large changes are tough. I'm confident that problems will appear over the next twelve months and there may be outages too. But it sounds like HMRC recognise this - hence why there's no fines in 2013/14, plus HMRC have also communicated this to developers this week:

Learning from our experience with the pilot, we will be carefully tracking each initial submission… we are taking these extra precautions to ensure that we are doing everything we can to get it right.

The fact is RTI is here. Accountants have known about this for a long time, and have had plenty of time to get on board.

How about we just get on with it and stop moaning?