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Every month you have to pay HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) what you owe as part of running payroll for your employees.

There are things you should check if your PAYE bill is not what you expected when you view your

What to check

Make sure you sent your Full Payment Submission (FPS) or Employer Payment Summary (EPS) in time for the account to update.

You should also check that you:

• used the date you paid your employees on your FPS report, not the date you sent it
• reported other details in your FPS correctly, for example pay and deductions
• reported your EPS correctly, for example to reclaim any statutory pay
• previously paid HMRC the right amount - you may have paid too much or too little if your reports were incorrect

Employees starting and leaving

Check that you correctly reported any employees starting or employees leaving.

You may get an incorrect bill and duplicate payroll records if you made a mistake. Both are usually corrected automatically - contact HMRC if your PAYE bill is still wrong by the 12th of the next tax month.

Correcting errors

If you find a mistake, follow the guidance to:

• correct an error in your FPS or EPS
• correct a payment to HMRC

You can also correct mistakes if you paid your employee the wrong amount or made incorrect deductions.

Get help to correct your PAYE bill

Contact HMRC’s employer helpline if you need help.

Your PAYE bill might be wrong if you made a mistake in your Full Payment Submission (FPS) or Employer Payment Summary (EPS). You might have to correct:

• pay or deductions
• payment dates
• start or leaving dates for your employee
• employee information
• reports sent in advance
• National Insurance category letters
• employee workplace postcodes if you’ve claimed National Insurance relief in UK Freeport or Investment Zone special tax sites
• amounts in your EPS
• the Apprenticeship Levy you owe (starting from April 2017) if you, or employers you’re connected to, have an annual pay bill of more than £3 million

If you’ve reported the wrong pay or deductions

To correct a mistake made in the current tax year, update the year-to-date figures in your next regular FPS.

If you’re correcting an FPS for a previous payment and the ‘payment after leaving (PAL)’ box is ticked do not enter the same amounts in the ‘pay in period’ and ‘pay in year-to-date’ fields. Doing this will create a duplicate record for your employee.

The rules are different if you find a mistake in your final FPS of the year.

If the mistake was in the tax years between 6 April 2020 and 5 April 2025

Submit another FPS with the correct year to date figures.

If the mistake was in the tax year between 6 April 2019 and 5 April 2020

You can either submit:

• a further FPS with the correct year to date figures
• an Earlier Year Update (EYU) showing the difference between what you originally reported and the correct figure

You can only use an EYU for tax years when you were reporting online in real time.

If your payroll software cannot send an EYU, you can use HMRC’s Basic PAYE Tools.

Correct a pension death benefit or flexibility payment

If you’re a pension administrator who needs to correct a flexibility payment or death benefit payment:

• select the ‘pension flexibility payment’ or ‘pension death benefit payment’ indicator
• update the ‘pensions drawdown taxable payment’ or ’pensions drawdown non-taxable payment’ fields (or both) with the difference between what you originally reported and the correct figures

If your payroll software cannot do this, contact your software provider.

If your employee has stopped working for you

Include them in your next FPS and correct their year-to-date figures. Include their original ‘Date of leaving’ and put the same or a later ‘Payment date’ than the one shown on their final FPS.

Correct the payment date in your FPS

You should use the date you paid your employees in your FPS.

Send an additional FPS with the correct payment date if you’ve sent one with the wrong payment date. Write ‘H - correction to earlier submission’ in the ‘Late reporting reason’ field.

If you’re correcting an FPS for a previous payment and the ‘payment after leaving (PAL)’ box is ticked, do not enter the same amounts in the ‘pay in period’ and ‘pay in year-to-date’ fields. Doing this will create a duplicate record for your employee.

You need to put 0.00 in the ‘pay in period’ field. The year-to-date entry should stay the same for the previous FPS.

Send your corrected FPS by the 19th of the tax month after you sent your original FPS. HMRC will apply the correction to the right month.

Correct an employee’s start or leaving date

Update your payroll records with the correct date if you put the wrong start or leaving date for an employee in your FPS.

Do not report the amendment in your next FPS as this may create a duplicate record for the employee.

Correct your employee’s personal information

Correct your next FPS if you’ve made a mistake with your employee’s personal details.

Do not report updates to more than one of your employee’s personal details (for example their name, date of birth or gender) in the same FPS. Your payroll records may be duplicated if you do, and your PAYE bill might be wrong.

If your employee’s details (for example their address or surname) change:

• they must tell HMRC straight away
• you need to update your payroll records

Correct FPS reports sent in advance

If you’ve sent FPS reports in advance that need to be corrected (for example because an employee leaves), you should:

• send another FPS for the tax month the correction relates to, making sure you fill in all relevant fields and revising the year-to-date figures if needed

• correct any other FPS reports you sent in advance that are affected by the change

Correct an employee’s National Insurance category letter

How you do this depends on why the category letter changed, and in which tax year.

You’ve used the wrong category letter in the current tax year

Report the mistake in your next FPS.

1. Add the category letter you’ve used incorrectly.

2. Put ‘0’ in all National Insurance fields for this category letter except ‘Employee’s NICs this payment’, and enter the amount you have repaid or recovered here, for example put -£300 if you’re repaying an employee’s overpayment of £300.

3. Add the correct category letter, and enter the correct year-to-date National Insurance for this category letter.

4. Put ‘0’ in all National Insurance fields for the incorrect category letter for the rest of the tax year - you do not need to do this if the category should never have been used.

Your employee’s category letter changed during the tax year

In your next FPS:

1. Continue to report year-to-date information for the old category.

2. Put ‘0’ in all ‘In this pay period’ fields for this category, and use the ‘Employee’s NICs this payment’ field to adjust any underpayment or overpayment of National Insurance.

3. Add the correct category letter, and enter the correct year-to-date National Insurance for this category letter.

You’ve used the wrong category letter in the tax years between 6 April 2021 and 5 April 2025

Send an additional FPS with the correct category letter and correct year-to-date National Insurance for this category letter.

If the mistake was in the 2020 to 2021 tax year or earlier

Send an EYU with:

• negative amounts in all the National Insurance year-to-date fields in the incorrect category letter, to reduce the employee’s National Insurance to zero
• the correct category letter and correct year-to-date National Insurance

If you’re correcting a mistake in the 2019 to 2020 or 2020 to 2021 tax years, you may be able to send an FPS instead - use your payroll software to check. Send it with the correct category letter and correct year-to-date National Insurance.

If the mistake caused an overpayment or underpayment

You must correct your employee’s National Insurance deductions if they paid too little or too much because they were on the wrong category letter.

Correct an employee workplace postcode when claiming National Insurance relief in UK Freeport or Investment Zone special tax sites

If you’ve submitted an FPS with an incorrect employee workplace postcode, use the correct workplace postcode from your next regular FPS.

Correct an EPS

To correct a mistake in the current tax year, send an EPS with the correct year-to-date figures.

For previous tax years, send an EPS with the correct year-to-date figures for the tax year where you made the mistake.

What you need to do to correct a payment depends on whether you paid too much or too little, and how the error occurred.

If you’ve paid HMRC too little

If you underpaid because of a mistake in your Full Payment Submission (FPS) or Employer Payment Summary (EPS), correct it in your next regular report. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will add the underpayment to your next PAYE bill.

If you underpaid because you entered the wrong amount when paying HMRC, pay the balance as soon as possible or you may have to pay interest or a penalty. Use your Accounts Office reference when paying.

If you’ve paid HMRC too much

If you overpaid because of a mistake in your FPS or EPS, make the correction in your next regular report. HMRC will take the overpayment off your next PAYE bill.

If you overpaid because you entered the wrong amount when paying HMRC, or you made a duplicate payment, you can balance your account by paying less in your next PAYE bill.

You can also claim a refund if you’ve overpaid.

You can correct a mistake with an employee’s pay or deductions by updating the year-to-date figures in your next regular Full Payment Submission (FPS).

You can also correct it by sending an additional FPS before your next regular FPS is due. You need to:

• update the ‘this pay period’ figures with the difference between what you originally reported and the correct figures
• correct the year-to-date figures
• put the same payment date as the original FPS
• put the same pay frequency as the original FPS
• put ‘H - Correction to earlier submission’ in the ‘Late reporting reason’ field

Correct a pension death benefit or flexibility payment

If you’re a pension administrator who needs to correct a flexibility payment or death benefit payment, you must:

• select the ‘pension flexibility payment’ or ‘pension death benefit payment’ indicator
• update the ‘pensions drawdown taxable payment’ or ’pensions drawdown non-taxable payment’ fields (or both) with the difference between what you originally reported and the correct figures

If you underpaid your employee

Pay your employee the amount you underpaid them. On or before the day of this payment, send an additional FPS with:

• the difference between what you originally reported and the correct amount in the ‘In this pay period’ field
• updated year-to-date figures
• ‘H - Correction to earlier submission’ in the ‘Late reporting reason’ field

Correct an employee’s National Insurance deductions

What you need to do depends on when you made the mistake.

If the mistake was in this tax year

Repay or deduct the balance from your employee. Update the year-to-date figures to the corrected amount in your next regular FPS or send an additional FPS.

If you deducted too little, you cannot recover more than the employee’s National Insurance contribution due that month.

If the mistake was in the tax years between 6 April 2020 and 5 April 2025

Send an FPS with the amount you should have deducted.

You’ll need to write to HMRC if both the following apply:

• the difference is negative because you deducted or reported too much National Insurance
• you still owe your employee a refund, for example because they’ve left your employment

In the letter you’ll need to include:

• the reference ‘Overpaid NI contributions’
• your employee’s name, date of birth and National Insurance number
• why you overpaid National Insurance contributions
• which tax years you overpaid in
• how much National Insurance you overpaid
• why you are unable to make the payment to the employee

For a claim for one employee, send the letter to:

For a claim for more than one employee, send the letter to:

If the mistake was in the tax year between 6 April 2019 and 5 April 2020

Send an FPS with the correct year-to-date National Insurance if:

• your payroll software will let you submit an FPS
• you can pay any National Insurance refunds you owe

If you cannot use an FPS, send an Earlier Year Update (EYU) with the difference between:

• the amount of National Insurance you originally deducted
• the correct amount you should have deducted

If the difference is negative (because you deducted or reported too much National Insurance), you also need to set the ‘NIC refund indicator’ to:

• ‘Yes’ if you’ve refunded your employee or no refund was due
• ‘No’ if you still owe your employee a refund (for example because they’ve left your employment)

If there’s an underpayment

If you deducted too little National Insurance, pay HMRC the underpayment straight away. You can then recover the amount from your employee by making deductions from their pay.

You cannot recover more than the amount of National Insurance the employee owes in a month (so the employee pays no more than double their normal contribution). Carry over the difference to later months - you can only make deductions in the tax year when you made the mistake and the year after.

Correct an employee’s student loan repayments

What you need to do depends on when you made the mistake.

If the mistake was in this tax year

Repay or deduct the balance from your employee. Update the year-to-date figures to the corrected amount in your next regular FPS or send an additional FPS.

If you deducted too little, you cannot recover more than the student loan repayment due that month.

If the mistake was in previous tax years

You do not need to take any action if either of the following apply:

• you’ve deducted too little
• you’ve already submitted your final FPS for that year

Your employee should contact the Student Loans Company to find out how it affects them.

If you have deducted too much, and you have not sent your final FPS for that year, you can repay your employee. Send an FPS with the correct ‘student loan repayment year to date’ figure as of 5 April for the previous tax year.