DMBM520287 - Debt and return pursuit: PAYE: payment schedule requests: background

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Some employers and their agents contact HMRC to provide schedules of PAYE payments they have made, some times covering several years, to enable them to reconcile an underpayment or overpayment or to establish the balance due or overpaid when completing their annual returns. However, an employer is required to keep PAYE records for the current and previous three tax years and they should be able to reconcile their payment positions without recourse to HMRC for full payment schedules.

HMRC cannot accommodate requests for schedules of payments and we must ask employers and their agents to do more themselves and only contact us when they cannot reconcile the problem using their own records. We therefore require them to send us the details to check rather than the other way around.

In limited circumstances we will provide short payment schedules or confirmation by phone where the request is either to confirm:

• the overall totals paid for a closed year or to date for the current year
• single payments received for the most recent three months or last three payments.

Where the request is for detail of payments beyond this limited area, we must ask the employer or their agent to write giving us the details they hold for the period, or periods, concerned and we will reply confirming or highlighting any differences.

Any request from an employer or agent for a schedule of payments must be handled according to this guidance.