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Employers will not have to report on or before payment is made under the new RTI regime in some cases, such as for cash payments to night catering staff.

Full Payment Submission Not Immediately Required

One of the key principles of the new "Real Time Information" or RTI regime is that employers report the pay and tax details for each payment to each employee, on or before the payment is made. However, as several parties including the professional bodies have pointed out, this will not realistically be possible in some circumstances - such as for casual staff, who are paid for hours worked at the end of their shift.

HM Revenue & Customs has now announced that it will not require the employer to make the normal "Full Payment Submission" (FPS) in this and similar situations, such as:

• A crop picker paid in cash at the end of a day, an amount which varies based on the amount picked, or
• Casual bar staff paid in cash at the end of the night/their shift

The payment must meet all of the following criteria

1. Payment must be for work done on the day of payment
2. Must not be made electronically - e.g., cash or cheque
3. Must be made at a time or place where it would be impractical to report 'on or before' payment is made, and
4. The amount cannot be ascertained beforehand

In such cases the payment must be reported on the earlier of

• either the next regular return made by the employer or
• 7 days

National Insurance Only and Notional Payments

There are further relaxations of the FPS requirement, for benefits and expenses that are subject only to Class I National Insurance Contributions and not PAYE, (such as the payment of an employee's private telephone bill), and for notional payments where there is no transfer of money to the employee - typically share awards.

In such cases the payment must be reported on the earlier of

• the next time the employer runs the payroll or calculates PAYE/NI on the payment as relevant, and
• 14 days

Marginal and ad hoc Items

Note that the rules for applying NICs to 'marginal' items of pay will continue to apply. "ad hoc" payments made outside of the regular payroll may also be included in the next regular payroll run - although not all payments made outside of the regular payroll routine will necessarily qualify as "ad hoc".

For further information, see Real Time Information: Timing of Real Time PAYE Returns and RTI and "On or Before"