PAYE changes 'unwise and ill conceived'

THE TAXMAN'S plans for managing PAYE has been slammed as "unwise and ill-conceived".

Proposals have been made by HM Revenu & Customs to gather real time information for tax and universal credit purposes through the BACS system but experts have dismissed the idea.

Donald Drysdale, assistant director of tax at ICAS, said: "Given that HMRC have failed to cope with the task of reconciling PAYE and National Insurance Contributions annually, there is no reason to believe that they would be any more successful in clearing the much greater number of reconciliations potentially arising on a monthly or weekly basis under real time information (RTI)."

ICAS cites the recent troubles that have hit PAYE systems as proof that a switch to RTI will fail to work.

The taxman intends to notify software developers of RTI information by the end of March. Tests with a limited number of employers will then staged before a full scale roll-out.