When you are in the UK and working as an employer of the company, before you plan to hire employees for your company services, you will have to register with HMRC normally. This is also a requirement even when you are taking the services of subcontractors for your construction work. This turns out to be beneficial if you learn the basics of how to register a company for PAYE. This has become a must-have requirement even when you’re hiring yourself as the director of your limited company. Before payday approaches for the first time in your company, you must ensure that you are registered with HMRC. HMRC normally takes a short period of five days to provide you with the employer PAYE reference number.

Moreover, this is imperative to mention here that you will not be able to register your company for two months before paying the employees. In some circumstances, you are bound to pay certain employees even before your company is registered with PAYE. In such a scenario you must try to send the late full payment and inform HMRC about it, run the payroll, and save the detail for the full payment submission. People often make mistakes in this procedure which can cause them penalties. To avoid this kind of unfavourable circumstances, you must gather basic information. This post is based on the required basics about how to register a company for PAYE as an employer, what are the required circumstances to get registered, if is there any timeframe for the procedure, and what you should consider before getting registered.

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What are the Circumstances Required to Get Registered as an Employer?

When you are connected to any one of the scenarios, you are in a position to get registered with HMRC as an employer:

1. You are giving employee benefits to your employees.
2. The employees are in a position to receive the occupational pension, company pension, or state pension.
3. The employees are working through another job as well.
4. You are giving a salary to your employees which is equal to or more than the National Insurance Lower Earnings Limit (in the tax year 2022-2023 this limit is £123 every week). This could possibly be an amount of £533 a month and £6,396 within the duration of a year.

Moreover, if you come under the category of business that is in need of hiring just one employee to share the work burden and let us just say you pay an amount of £9.50 for one hour, you will not be required to get registered for PAYE. This is because of the fact that the employee comes under the category of LEL or below it and you can pay such an employee without following any PAYE scheme.

What is the Timeframe for Getting Registered as an Employer?

When you find yourself in a position to get registered as an employer, you must try to get it done before the first payday approaches. There must be plenty of time to initiate the process and try to complete it before it’s high time to do it. This is because of the time duration that HMRC requires to finally complete the process and send you the PAYE reference number.

HMRC might require a duration of five days to a week for this. Once you have to pay the employees, there is the compulsion of getting registered for two months as well. If you could not initiate the process in time, you do not need to panic over this matter. The government of the UK has the solution updated on the website to solve the problem of paying employees before you are registered.

What are the Things to Consider Before You Start the Process to Register for PAYE?

The possible two ways of sending the employee information and the details of payment to HMRC. This belongs to the running of payroll. You could either do it on paper or you can do it online. However, HMRC suggests using online software to share the information with them. Moreover, there are cases of employers who can still avail the opportunity of sending the information through paperwork to HMRC.

There is a criterion for who is actually eligible to use the mode of paperwork. Also, consider the advantages and disadvantages of choosing the right medium to communicate details to them. Once you are clear about choosing your option of sending the information online or through paperwork, there are certain things to consider that are given in the following:

• Keep your national insurance number with you.
• You must know the date when you received your payment for the first time.
• The expected beginning date of PAYE.
• The number of employees hired.
• What is the nature of your business?
• The basic contact details like your email address and your phone number.
• Your name and personal and office address.

The Bottom Line

Now that you have gathered a fair amount of information about how to register a company for PAYE, we can bring the discussion towards wrapping up. When you are carrying out a business in the role of an employer,  it comes with a lot of responsibilities in the UK to be followed. One of such responsibilities is to get registered with HMRC for the PAYE scheme so that you can pay your employees following the rules of this scheme. This is not mandatory in many cases where there is no need of hiring more than one employee or the salary of the employee is below the level of LEL.

Get in touch with our young, clever and tech-driven professionals if you want to choose the best guide for registering a company for PAYE in the UK  for your employees. 

Disclaimer: The information about how to register a company for PAYE in the UK provided in this blog includes text and graphics of general nature. It does not intend to disregard any of the professional advice.