After a number of years trying to adopt a less paper approach with HMRC we are finally giving up this week.
HMRC issue coding notice changes electronically via their website along with student loan start and stop notices. However, there is no easy way to access these as a bureau and we are limited to going into every one of our clients, looking for details and then printing these changes off. These are then manually updated into our payroll systems. There are no batched based bureau friendly facilities at present.
So while it will cost the taxpayer more in postage costs we will revert to requesting all tax code changes via the post. This will save us a significant amount of time downloading the thousands we get each week and paper.
We understand however, that the PDV "payroll desktop viewer" is in testing and will be along later in the year and will allow for bulk downloads for accountants and payroll bureaus.
I only hope our pressure on HMRC to make some changes for the benefit of bureau’s will have some impact otherwise there is little point in us pursuing the less paper alternatives.
