Closing down company - gotten myself stuck with PAYE and RTI

[MrBasset]

Hi,

Having relocated to North America, I'm looking to close down my UK Ltd and wrap up my final business in the UK. I'm trying to close down my PAYE schema, but in between moving country, starting a new business here and trying to close things down there, I've managed to mess up the Basic Tools RTI application and now have no idea how to proceed.

This is what I have done so far:

• I last paid myself on the 25th March 14 (pay day is always the 25th of the month). I pushed through the submission that day.
• On the 3rd April 2014 I pushed through the final submission for the tax year
• I then left the UK, did a whole bunch of other stuff, got caught up in making an insurance claim for my things which were damaged during transport and basically forgot about the final submission.
• On the 14th May, I finally has some time to look at closing down the company. I did some (limited) reading that I had to notify HMRC of the end of scheme via the RTI tool. Opening up the tool I tried to create an PAYE scheme ceased notice, which told me that it couldn't continue until I had recorded that all employees (myself) had left.
• So I created a leaving date for myself. Since I finished my last contract on the 28th March that is the date that I put down. This has created an submitted FPS which now fails to submit because a) it is after April 19th and therefore too late for the submission and b) it is dated before my final submission.
• I phoned HMRC to see what I could do, I was instructed to delete the FPS from the list, change the date and resubmit it.

Well, my problem (aside from having not taken a backup prior to doing something really drastic like closing the scheme) is that I can't find a way to delete the FPS. The last backup I have from the RTI tools is dated Dec 2013 ... and even if I restored to that, I would then have to re-enter and re-submit all my pay dates since then, which I'm not sure that I can do?

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to proceed?

Thanks in advance,
~Dan

[Martin at NixonWilliams]

Hi,

Having relocated to North America, I'm looking to close down my UK Ltd and wrap up my final business in the UK. I'm trying to close down my PAYE schema, but in between moving country, starting a new business here and trying to close things down there, I've managed to mess up the Basic Tools RTI application and now have no idea how to proceed.

This is what I have done so far:

• I last paid myself on the 25th March 14 (pay day is always the 25th of the month). I pushed through the submission that day.
• On the 3rd April 2014 I pushed through the final submission for the tax year
• I then left the UK, did a whole bunch of other stuff, got caught up in making an insurance claim for my things which were damaged during transport and basically forgot about the final submission.
• On the 14th May, I finally has some time to look at closing down the company. I did some (limited) reading that I had to notify HMRC of the end of scheme via the RTI tool. Opening up the tool I tried to create an PAYE scheme ceased notice, which told me that it couldn't continue until I had recorded that all employees (myself) had left.
• So I created a leaving date for myself. Since I finished my last contract on the 28th March that is the date that I put down. This has created an submitted FPS which now fails to submit because a) it is after April 19th and therefore too late for the submission and b) it is dated before my final submission.
• I phoned HMRC to see what I could do, I was instructed to delete the FPS from the list, change the date and resubmit it.

Well, my problem (aside from having not taken a backup prior to doing something really drastic like closing the scheme) is that I can't find a way to delete the FPS. The last backup I have from the RTI tools is dated Dec 2013 ... and even if I restored to that, I would then have to re-enter and re-submit all my pay dates since then, which I'm not sure that I can do?

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to proceed?

Thanks in advance,
~Dan

We use Sage Payroll so the options might be slightly different to those on HMRC's basic tools. However, it seems the issue you have is that an FPS adjustment cannot be done after 19th April.

There should be an 'earlier year update' function that allows you to make the adjustment to the submissions for 2013/14, but I am not sure where if/how this option appears on basic tools.

Another option that might be easier is to make yourself a leaver after 5th April, make an end of year declaration for 2014/15 and close the scheme in the 2014/15 tax year?

I hope this helps.

Martin

[MrBasset]

Martin,

Thanks for your reply; you are right in that I should make myself a leaver and close everything down in the new tax year, this is what HMRC suggested I do having deleted the bad submission.

My problem though is that basic tools shows the un-submitted FPS for the 2013/14 tax year which holds the leaver information. I can't do anything in the basic tools until this is successfully submitted, but the tools won't allow me to submit the FPS as it fails the business rules. There doesn't seem to be any functionality to delete the erroneous data and re-input it and so far no-one from HMRC have been able to offer a solution within the basic tools (it has been suggested that I buy some commercial software in order to do this).

I had been considering the Sage One product; they offer a 30-day free trial and allow you to import your Basic Tools data. I've yet to take that approach though as I would hope that there is an option within Basic Tools that would allow me to proceed.

I suppose an alternative I could consider is hacking the Basic Tools database ...

[MrBasset]

[Solution] Automated backups

Replying to myself here, but I have found a solution!

The basic tools application looks like it automatically saves a backup in certain circumstances in a folder that is different to my normal network backup location (in my case in the appdata/roaming folder). In my case I had it configured to save daily backups, but it looks to be saving backups on application exit. Either way, it doesn't matter as there was a backup saved prior to my entering the leaving date that I have been able to restore to, so I am now able to properly enter a leaving date within this tax year and hopefully close down the scheme.

Hopefully if anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation they'll have a similar backup to restore to as this seems to be the only way to remove submissions that fail the business rules.

~Dan

[Martin at NixonWilliams]

Replying to myself here, but I have found a solution!

The basic tools application looks like it automatically saves a backup in certain circumstances in a folder that is different to my normal network backup location (in my case in the appdata/roaming folder). In my case I had it configured to save daily backups, but it looks to be saving backups on application exit. Either way, it doesn't matter as there was a backup saved prior to my entering the leaving date that I have been able to restore to, so I am now able to properly enter a leaving date within this tax year and hopefully close down the scheme.

Hopefully if anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation they'll have a similar backup to restore to as this seems to be the only way to remove submissions that fail the business rules.

~Dan

Good to hear