Agent Bulletin September

HMRC has published the latest Agent Bulletin for September, the information provided is for those that provide services to payroll professionals, either directly running payrolls or providing Bureaux/Accounting services to clients.

Included in the bulletin is a reminder that the new Statutory Neonatal Care Pay and Leave (SNCP) will come into force in April 2025.

This new statutory allowance is going to be paid to those qualifying parents who have a baby that is born prematurely and poorly and may then receive neonatal care in hospital in the first 28 days following the birth of that child.

Parents who qualify can be paid the statutory payment for a maximum period of 12 weeks. The rules for entitlement will be the same as for other statutory payments.

Parents can choose to take SNCP in addition to other leave entitlements currently in operation such as statutory maternity or paternity leave.

Employers can also recover the relevant 92 or 103% of any SNCP where applicable.

Also included in the bulletin is an advanced notice to agents that HMRC has made some enhancements to the letters they will be sent to customers when they authorise an agent to act on their behalf via the Online Agent Authorisation service.

The guidance from HMRC confirms the duties of Agents

They’ll be able to deal with your tax for you, including:

• exchanging information with us about your tax
• filing your Self Assessment tax returns
• making claims for tax relief in your tax returns
• providing bank details so we can pay back any tax if you’ve paid too much. This includes the ability to nominate someone else’s bank account rather than your own.

It also confirms the client’s responsibilities are to:

• check and confirm in writing to your agent — that each Self Assessment tax return your agent submits on your behalf is correct and complete to the best of your knowledge before they send it to us.
• pay the tax you owe on time.

The changes take effect from September.