Payroll
Payroll & Auto-Enrolment
The moment you pay somebody — including yourself through your own limited company — you are an employer with monthly obligations to HMRC. We run it so you do not have to think about it.
On or before
RTI submission timing
Every single payday
3 years
Pension re-declaration
To The Pensions Regulator
£100+
Late filing penalty
Per month, per scheme
£5,000
Employment Allowance
Off your employer NI bill
The Problem
The problem: payroll is monthly, and it does not wait
Unlike your tax return, payroll is not an annual event you can catch up on. HMRC must be told about every payment on or before the day you make it, under Real Time Information. Miss the submission and penalties follow automatically.
Then there is auto-enrolment. Every employer has to assess staff for a workplace pension, enrol those who qualify, contribute, and re-declare to The Pensions Regulator every three years. It applies to a business with one employee just as it does to one with a hundred.
For drivers this usually arrives in one of two ways: you incorporate and start taking a salary from your own company, or you put a second driver on your vehicle. Both make you an employer overnight, and neither comes with a warning.
What we do for you
- PAYE scheme registered with HMRC
- Payslips produced each pay period
- RTI submissions to HMRC on or before every payday
- Tax-efficient director salary set and reviewed each April
- Employment Allowance claimed where you qualify
- Auto-enrolment assessment, enrolment and re-declaration
- Starters, leavers and P45s dealt with
- P60s at year end
- Employment status advice before you take somebody on
Paying yourself through your own company
If you have incorporated, the usual approach is a modest salary plus dividends. The salary is a deductible cost for the company and, set at the right level, it keeps your National Insurance record intact for State Pension purposes without generating a meaningful NI bill.
That salary still has to run through a registered PAYE scheme with a submission to HMRC every month, even when the tax due is nil. Directors who assume a small salary means no filing obligation are the ones who end up with penalties.
The right salary level shifts as thresholds move, so it is worth reviewing each April rather than setting it once and forgetting.
Putting a second driver on your vehicle
This is where the biggest risk sits, and it is worth being blunt about it.
Whether that person is genuinely self-employed or is actually your employee is not a matter of what you both agree or what the paperwork says. HMRC looks at the reality: who controls the hours, who takes the financial risk, who provides the vehicle, whether they can send a substitute.
Get it wrong and HMRC can come after you for the PAYE and National Insurance that should have been deducted — the liability sits with you as the engager, not with the driver. If you are bringing somebody onto your vehicle, have the status question looked at properly first.
Auto-enrolment in practice
Anyone aged between 22 and State Pension age earning over £10,000 a year has to be enrolled into a workplace pension, with minimum contributions from both of you.
Staff who do not meet the criteria still have rights to opt in, and you have to tell them so in writing. There is also a re-enrolment exercise every three years and a re-declaration of compliance to The Pensions Regulator. It is a lot of process for a very small employer, and it is all handled as part of what we do.
Questions
Payroll questions drivers ask
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