Filing deadline extended for annual share scheme returns
Companies operating any of the following tax-advantaged schemes have to make an annual report to HMRC:
- Company share option plans
- Enterprise management Incentives
- Save as you earn
- Share incentive plan
- Other employment-related security schemes or arrangements
The reporting deadline is 6th July and there are penalties for not getting returns in on time.
However, the method by which returns are submitted, the Employment-Related Securities (ERS) service was unavailable from 3 July to 20 July.
HMRC have confirmed that the deadline for submitting returns has been extended to 4th August and no penalties will be incurred as long as the returns are submitted by that date.
HMRC have confirmed that there is no requirement for employers to contact them. However, they currently, cannot confirm themselves whether returns filed before 3rd July need to be resubmitted. HMRC are “still investigating the potential impact on those companies and will publish a further message about this in due course”.
Unfortunately, we cannot see that HMRC have made any announcements about these technical problems their own website. They seem to have been contacting companies and advisers through other channels
This then begs the question of how HMRC will be making announcements going forward!
Comment
Dare we suggest that this is yet another example of HMRC systems not being robust enough?
Matthew Findley of Pinsent Masons commented. "…… the length of the service outage, suggests that the problems were serious."