Submit your excuses for missing the P11D deadline

By 5 April 2020 the UK was in full coronavirus lockdown, and many people are still working at home or on furlough, but HMRC has not extended the filing deadline for submitting the 2019/20 P11Ds. The deadline passed on Monday, 6 July.

If you missed the P11D deadline due to difficulties created by the coronavirus, HMRC will accept that as a reasonable excuse to escape a penalty. You should record the circumstances which prevented the completion of the returns, (e.g. access to records) and endeavour to submit the information as soon as the difficulty is resolved. Any further delay beyond the point the reasonable excuse no longer applied will mean a penalty can be imposed.

There may have been a lot of unusual employee expenses at the end of the tax year, as staff were asked to change where they worked, or find other ways to get to work. It's important to capture all of those unusual costs and check whether each could be covered by an exemption, otherwise it will need to be reported on a P11D or in a payroll settlement agreement (PSA).

Check the HMRC booklets 480 and 490 for detailed guidance, and watch out for these tricky areas:

• Taxis home - the cost is tax exempt only where the employee has been required to work beyond 9pm, and public transport is not available, and the taxis are used on 60 or few journeys in a tax year.
• Childcare - any reimbursement of childcare costs incurred by employees is a taxable benefit, whatever the reason for the childcare.

HMRC's booklet 480: Expenses and benefits

HMRC booklet 490: Employee travel

Reasonable excuses for late filing

This information is taken from the weekly Tax Tips, published by the Tax Advice Network, for which you can subscribe at www.TaxAdviceNetwork.co.uk