Register Your Business For PAYE With HMRC In 10 Min

If you intend to hire employees, including yourself, you will need to register as an employer with HMRC. The system used by HMRC is referred to as 'Pay As You Earn' (PAYE) and collects Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs) from eligible employees.

Once you have completed our online form and it has been approved by us, we will submit an application to HMRC on your behalf. Then, once you've been successfully registered as an employer by HMRC, you'll receive a letter in the post with your PAYE reference.

An employer reference number is a unique combination of letters and numbers, also called an employer PAYE reference, PAYE reference number (ERN). It is given to a business when it registers with HMRC as an employer, serving to identify the employer for employee income tax and national insurance purposes.

The employer reference number is in two parts. The first part is 3 digits, which identifies the HMRC office number that deals with the company’s PAYE (e.g. 135). The second part of the reference, which follows a forward slash, is the tax office’s reference for the employer itself. (e.g. AB56789). A business registered as an employer before 2001 will have an employer reference number in the form 135/A56789. Those registered after that date will take the form 135/AB56789.

You can find your employer’s reference number from several sources:

• In the Yellow Booklet supplied by HMRC when you first registered as an employer
• On any historic payslip, P45, P60 or P11D issued to past or present employees
• Other correspondence from HMRC about PAYE
• If your outsource your payroll, your accountant or bookkeeper
• As a last resort, you can call HMRC’s Employer Helpline on 0300 200 3200. While they can resend the reference to the employer, it may take up to two weeks to arrive

Real Time Information requires employers to send a return to HMRC every time they pay their employees. Nearly all employers have had to send RTI returns since April 2013.

If you have one or more employees in the UK, then you, as an employer are responsible for ensuring H.M. Revenue & Customs' deductions are made. Income Tax, based on an individual's tax code and Employee's National Insurance Contributions must be deducted before the net sum can be paid. Employer's NI is also payable, but this is paid by the employer and is not deducted from pay. The employer deducts tax and national insurance from their employees' pay and then pay this sum on a monthly basis over to HM Revenue and Customs.

The employer gives the employee a payslip on payday which sets out the gross and cumulative amounts of pay and all the deductions. If applicable, pension deductions, maternity pay, Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) and other items can be shown on the payslips. The total payments, minus all of the deductions gives the net pay, which is the actual amount paid to the employee. Also on payday, the employer sends a Real Time Information submission to HMRC, giving details of each employee, the payments and the deductions.

We will produce your employee payroll on your behalf and sends a Real Time Information submission to HMRC, giving details of each employee, the payments and the deductions. We deal with the admin ensuring that you are compliant with HMRC and you will just need to pay your employee and HMRC from your bank account.