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What's the latest you can submit Forms P11D, P11D(b), etc., before a penalty is incurred? This might appear to be a simple question but appearances can be deceptive, for this question, it seems, has foxed and befuddled the finest minds at HMRC for at least the last year. 

Last year, for the 2010/11 season, TaxationWeb ran this article: P11D Filing Deadline - HMRC's "Best Hidden Concession" Means More Time to File!  Has HMRC used the intervening period to get its house in order..?

From HMRC's What's New Section for 18 June:

PAYE for employers: Expenses and Benefits - Have you filed forms P11D, P11D(b) and P9D yet?

Send your 2011-12 forms P11D, P11D(b) and P9D as soon as they are ready. They are due by 6 July 2012 and if you miss the deadline you may receive a penalty.

So far so bad: HMRC has 'form' when it comes to omitting to mention that they can be filed as late as 19 July*. 

However, the latest entry stretches new bounds - 

From HMRC's What's New Section for 20 June: (emphasis added)

PAYE for employers: 2011-12 Expenses and Benefits form P11D(b)

Your 2011-12 P11D(b) Return of Class 1A National Insurance contributions was due on 6 July 2012. You may now be charged a penalty if you have not sent yours in yet. You must submit any outstanding P11Ds and P11D(b) as soon as possible.

Tax practitioners might find this amusing. Taxpayers reading that last news item without the benefit of many years' experience of tax / dealing with HMRC's foibles, might be bemused, concerned or worse. So, it's not really a laughing matter. 

There is, unfortunately, more to this story. From the What's New section for the previous month, and specifically this entry from 31 May: 

PAYE for employers: CWG5(2012) Class 1A National Insurance contributions on benefits in kind

HMRC has made some amendments to helpbook CWG5(2012).

Following the link PAYE for employers: CWG5(2012) Class 1A National Insurance contributions on benefits in kind

"It has been necessary to make the following amendments to the employer helpbook CWG5 (2012):

• Page 9 Paragraph 25 Late return penalties - text changed from 'If we do not receive the return by 6 July it will attract a penalty' to 'If we do not receive the return by 19 July it will attract a penalty'..."

So HMRC originally published its CWG5 booklet for 2011/12 with the wrong penalty deadline in it. Given the number of mistakes made in respect of such an apparently straight forward matter, one might wonder how HMRC can justify charging taxpayers a penalty at all...

Reading the rest of that HMRC article of 31 May indicates a degree of slapdash in updating the 2012 booklet from 2011. The annual CWG5 booklet is one of the most widely used HMRC publications: every employer should have a copy. One might suggest that this is the kind of thing that HMRC would have bent over backwards to get right, in years gone by, so as to prevent any unnecessary confusion or distress for taxpayers. That would be roughly before they stared referring to taxpayers as "customers" and, very roughly, the time executives with no knowledge of tax started trying to apply commercial business principles to what is fundamentally a civil service. We're not exactly printing instruction manuals for self-assembly furniture now, are we?

*Just for clarity, the statutory deadline is 6 July, and if the Forms P11D, etc., are not filed by 19 July, then the penalty and all future penalties (if applicable due to continued failure to file) run from the statutory date of 6 July.