Employer Payment Summary (EPS): Deadlines, Filing, and Corrections

An Employer Payment Summary, or EPS, is the PAYE filing a UK employer sends to HMRC to report the credits, recoveries, and allowances that reduce a monthly PAYE bill but cannot be captured on a Full Payment Submission. The FPS reports what each employee earned and what was deducted on payday. The EPS reports everything that changes what you actually owe: statutory payment recoveries, CIS deductions suffered, Employment Allowance, the Apprenticeship Levy, and periods when no one was paid at all. It reaches HMRC by the 19th of the month following each tax month, and filing it on time is what keeps your HMRC account balanced.

When You Need to File One

You file an EPS whenever something needs to come off your PAYE bill that the FPS doesn’t cover, or whenever you have nothing to report through an FPS at all. The common triggers:

Recovering statutory payments. If you’ve paid Statutory Maternity, Paternity, Adoption, Shared Parental, Parental Bereavement, or Neonatal Care Pay, you fund it upfront and reclaim it through the EPS. Standard-rate employers reclaim 92% of what they paid. Employers who qualify for Small Employers’ Relief reclaim 109%, which includes a 3% compensation uplift on the full amount. You qualify for the relief if your total Class 1 National Insurance in the previous tax year was £45,000 or less.1GOV.UK. Get Financial Help With Statutory Pay2GOV.UK. Rates and Thresholds for Employers 2026 to 2027

Claiming Employment Allowance. Eligible employers can reduce annual Class 1 National Insurance by up to £10,500. You claim it on an EPS at the start of the tax year and HMRC applies it monthly until it’s used up.3GOV.UK. Employment Allowance

Reporting CIS deductions suffered. Limited companies working as subcontractors under the Construction Industry Scheme have tax withheld by contractors. That tax is reclaimed through payroll, not Corporation Tax, and the EPS is where you enter the year-to-date CIS deductions so HMRC offsets them against your PAYE and NI liability.4GOV.UK. What You Must Do as a Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) Subcontractor

Reporting the Apprenticeship Levy. If your annual pay bill exceeds £3 million, you owe the levy at 0.5% of the pay bill, offset by a £15,000 annual allowance. Both the allowance and the year-to-date levy go on the EPS.5GOV.UK. Pay Apprenticeship Levy

Reporting a tax month with no payments. If you didn’t pay anyone in a tax month, you still need to tell HMRC. Skip the FPS and send an EPS confirming no payroll ran, otherwise HMRC may estimate a liability, chase you through PAYE Online, or issue a late filing penalty. If you know a longer quiet stretch is coming, use the “period of inactivity” fields to cover up to twelve months in one submission rather than filing a nil return every month.6GOV.UK. Running Payroll: Reporting to HMRC: EPS

Deadlines and Submission Windows

HMRC tax months run from the 6th of one calendar month to the 5th of the next. The EPS for a given tax month must reach HMRC by the 19th of the following calendar month. Meet that date and the credits are applied before the payment deadline on the 22nd (or the 19th if you pay by post).6GOV.UK. Running Payroll: Reporting to HMRC: EPS

The gateway starts accepting each month’s EPS on the 20th of the current tax month. Tax Month 3, for example, covers 6 June to 5 July; you can file its EPS from 20 June, and the deadline is 19 July. The final tax month of the year, 6 March to 5 April, is the exception: its deadline is 5 April, not the 19th.

If you miss the 19th, the credits simply won’t hit until the following period. That can make your HMRC online account temporarily show a higher liability than you actually owe. Because the EPS carries year-to-date figures, the missed month’s totals fold into your next submission and HMRC ends up with the correct cumulative position.

What Goes On It

The EPS carries cumulative year-to-date figures, not just numbers for the current month. Each submission effectively replaces the data from the previous one, so the totals you enter should reflect everything from 6 April through the current period. Gather from your payroll records:

Check the figures against bank statements, payslip records, and CIS deduction certificates before you send. A gap between what your EPS reports and what HMRC calculates from your FPS data can trigger a compliance enquiry or leave your account showing a balance you weren’t expecting.

How to Submit It

Submission is electronic. Commercial payroll software has an RTI module where you pick the EPS option, confirm the figures, and transmit to the Government Gateway. HMRC’s free Basic PAYE Tools has the same option under the employer tasks menu.

After a successful transmission you receive a digital confirmation with a correlation ID. Keep it as proof of filing. The updated figures usually appear on your HMRC online account within two days, though if you submit before the 11th of the month the balance may not refresh until the 14th.6GOV.UK. Running Payroll: Reporting to HMRC: EPS Check your Business Tax Account after those windows pass. If the credits still aren’t there, contact HMRC before the payment deadline. Interest can accrue on perceived underpayments even when the EPS behind them was filed correctly.

Year-End Submissions

The tax year ends on 5 April, and HMRC needs a clear signal that your reporting for the year is complete. Normally the “final submission for year” indicator goes on your last FPS. You need a final EPS instead in any of these situations:

  • You forgot to mark “Yes” in the final submission field on your last FPS.
  • Your payroll software has no final submission field on the FPS.
  • You didn’t pay anyone in the last pay period of the year.
  • You sent your final FPS early and then had one or more full tax months with no payments before 5 April.

Send the EPS with the year-end declaration before the deadline.7GOV.UK. Send Your Final Payroll Report Missing this step can delay P60s and create reconciliation problems that carry into the new tax year. If you run more than one payroll under the same PAYE reference, the year-end declaration goes in the very last report you send.

Fixing Errors

Spotted a mistake in a current-year EPS after it went in? Send a fresh EPS with the correct year-to-date figures. Because each submission overwrites the previous one’s cumulative totals, the corrected numbers replace the wrong ones automatically.8GOV.UK. Correcting Your Payroll Submissions

For an error in a previous tax year, send a corrected EPS tagged to that earlier year with the right year-to-date figures for the period. Your software should let you select the tax year before transmitting. The sooner you correct, the less likely the error compounds across later periods.

Penalties for Missing It or Getting It Wrong

When HMRC expects payroll information and doesn’t receive it on time, late filing penalties are charged monthly by scheme size:9GOV.UK. What Happens if You Do Not Report Payroll Information on Time

  • 1 to 9 employees: £100 per month
  • 10 to 49 employees: £200 per month
  • 50 to 249 employees: £300 per month
  • 250 or more employees: £400 per month

Nil returns matter for the same reason. If you didn’t pay anyone and didn’t file an EPS to say so, HMRC reads the silence as a missed submission.

Separate penalties apply when a submission turns out to be inaccurate. The scale depends on your behaviour: no penalty where you took reasonable care, 0% to 30% of the extra tax at stake for careless errors, 20% to 70% for deliberate errors, and 30% to 100% for deliberate and concealed errors. A careless-error penalty can be reduced to zero if you make a full unprompted disclosure before HMRC discovers the mistake.10GOV.UK. Penalties: An Overview for Agents and Advisers

Refunds When Credits Exceed Liability

If the credits reported on your EPS come to more than your PAYE liability for the period, you may have overpaid. Compare what you actually sent to HMRC against what your tax account shows was owed. You can claim online through your HMRC account or by post, sending a written request marked “Employers PAYE Overpayment” with your business name, PAYE reference, bank details, the amount, the tax year, and the reason.11HM Revenue & Customs. Claim for a Refund if You’ve Paid HMRC Too Much on Your PAYE Bill

HMRC won’t release cash if you owe tax elsewhere. An overpayment is offset first against your current-year PAYE, then previous years’ PAYE, then other taxes such as Corporation Tax or VAT. You only receive money back once you’re square across the board. If you want the overpayment applied to a specific liability, include the relevant reference (for example, your Corporation Tax UTR) in the claim.