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Each pay run produces a Full Payment Submission reporting pay and deductions, and it must be sent on or before the employees' payday. HMRC sends a late filing notice if employees have been paid and no FPS arrives, or it arrives late.

An Employer Payment Summary is sent when no employees have been paid in a tax month, and is also used to claim reductions against what is owed, for example statutory pay recovery. It should be sent by the 19th of the following tax month to be applied against that month's liability.

Payment to HMRC is due by the 22nd of the month, or by the 19th if paying by post, with penalties for late payment. Tax months run from the 6th of one month to the 5th of the next, which is why payroll dates sit awkwardly against calendar months.

Automatic enrolment is assessed every pay period against earnings thresholds published by the Pensions Regulator. For 2026 to 2027 the earnings trigger for automatic enrolment is £10,000 a year, and the qualifying earnings band runs from a lower level of £6,240 to an upper level of £50,270 a year.

Those figures matter twice over: the trigger decides who must be put into a scheme, and the band decides the slice of pay on which contributions are calculated. Staff whose pay fluctuates can move in and out of eligibility between pay periods, which is precisely the kind of assessment that has to be automated rather than remembered.

Enrolment duties sit with the employer, not the bureau. The Pensions Regulator is the body that enforces them, and its requirements run alongside, not inside, the HMRC reporting obligations.

Reporting benefits in kind through payroll becomes mandatory from 6 April 2027 for medical benefit, company cars, vans, and car and van fuel. From 6 April 2028 mandatory payrolling extends to most remaining benefits in kind, with employer-provided loans and accommodation staying on the existing end-of-year process for longer.

From April 2027, employers providing the listed benefits will no longer be able to report them after the end of the tax year, so the values have to be in the payroll data as they are provided.

This is a systems change as much as a tax change. Benefit values, start and end dates and changes mid-year all have to reach the payroll in time for the relevant pay run, which usually means HR and payroll processes have to be joined up before the deadline rather than after it.

The off-payroll working rules apply where a worker provides services through their own intermediary and would have been an employee if engaged directly. For public sector clients and for medium and large private and voluntary sector clients, the client determines the status and must produce a status determination statement including the reasons for it. Where the client is a small business, the worker's intermediary decides instead.

Where the rules apply, the deemed employer deducts Income Tax and employee National Insurance from the fees paid to the intermediary, and pays employer National Insurance and any Apprenticeship Levy to HMRC. Agencies have responsibilities regardless of size.

HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax tool gives HMRC's view based on the information entered, and HMRC states it will stand by all results given by the tool as long as the information remains accurate and is in accordance with its guidance. Keeping the output and the inputs is part of the answer, not an optional extra.