New rules for businesses on employee hours data delayed

Newsletter issue – November 2024

New rules for businesses surrounding submitting data about employees' hours through the tax system are to be delayed by a whole year, HMRC has announced.

Two sets of new draft regulations laid out the way businesses will have to change the information they provide to the tax man through both Income Tax Self-Assessment (ITSA) and PAYE (Pay As You Earn) real-time returns.

The new requirements were set to take effect in April 2025. But employers will have an extra year now to prepare for the changes, with the date being pushed back to April 2026.

The postponement is 'owing to the delay caused by the General Election and the lead-in time required to prepare for implementation,' HMRC officials noted in an update.

The draft regulations that had been consulted on earlier this year, whilst the Conservative Government was in power, were the Income Tax (Pay As You Earn) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 and the Income Tax (Additional Information to be included in Returns) Regulations 2024.

Further updates on the proposals and timelines will come in 'due course', HMRC added.