PAYE Ref - HELP

markh · PayPerShop Newbie Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 20

At present we process 10 separate payrolls within 5 different Tax Offices and they are all paid on the same day of the month. These 10 different payrolls are subsidiaries of the main company.

We are trying to harmonise the payroll so that these 10 payrolls can be merged into one to make payroll processing easier and we've written to the Tax Office to inform them of our intentions.

We've had a reply from them to say that we are unable to do this as the subsidiaries are companies in their own right and as such, each one requires a return.

Can anyone think of a way to get the staff on to one payroll group to ease the payroll administration that will have to continue if a way forward can't be found.

Any ideas greatly appreciated.

Aaron · PayPerShop Newbie Joined: 09 Jan 2008 Posts: 8

Could you not TUPE them across from one payroll company to the other? Making them leavers on one company and starters on the new?

Ian Whyteside · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:23 pm Post subject: PAYE Ref

Mark,

Hope this helps a bit. Sorry Aaron but TUPE wont work here because I suspect, for long term protection against contract failure and corporation tax purposes, the parent company will want to keep the subsidisaries separate and for TUPE to work they would have to close each one down and migrate all the contracts into one company.

HMRC are correct that as each one is a unique company in its own right they have to have separate employer references and as such they will be dealt with by separate tax offices.

Each company is a separate employer as well so there is sense in keeping some sort of separation here.

I feel the only rationalisation that could take place is if you at least asked for all the companies to be dealt with by a single tax office, that cannot be rocketscience to arrange and whilst it does not solve the payroll processing issues it at least gives some consistency of approach on each companies tax affairs.

Another answer must be to have all the employees on a single payroll run but in unique groups, each one having its own reference numbers and grand summaries but within a single processing run. Not sure what software you use but many of the systems available now should be able to do this.

Ian Whyteside

markh · PayPerShop Newbie Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 20

Thanks for the advice Ian. We currently use PSE as our payroll system so i'm not sure whether this is one of the systems you refer to as being able to deal with a single payroll but multiple PAYE Ref's

Ian Whyteside · Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 12:50 pm Post subject: Help

Mark,

I'm afraid I don't know that one but a quick call to them with the problem may produce a surprising answer. Most of the big players can do this though I have to say my old place used to be able to do this with the old Unipay software, a system was first written in the 1960's and is still around for a number of organisations.

I hope they can find a way of helping.

Ian Whyteside