HMRC Online Services Closure 19 / 20 November 2013

Just as a follow-up, HMRC advised that there was more ‘scheduled maintenance’ that meant Online Services was unavailable between 21:00 Tuesday 19 November and 00:59 Wednesday 20 November 2013.  Users of commercial software were unable to submit during this period of closure.

Note that the EPS Window is usually open until midnight on the 19^th; therefore, the closure this week shortened the Window for Month 07 submissions.  Also note that, as at today’s date, this information has still not been published on HMRC’s ‘What’s New’ page.

Comment

The following note was sent by HMRC’s Stakeholder Engagement and Communications Team, together with their apologies for any inconvenience cause:

‘I’d like to bring your attention to the fact that the Government Gateway will be closed for four hours between 21:00 on Tuesday 19 November and 00:59 on Wednesday 20 November.

This is due to planned maintenance and means that employers using commercial software or HMRC’s Basic PAYE Tools will not be able to send their real-time PAYE submissions during this time. Anyone who tries to submit at this time will receive a server error message and will need to try again later.

As you are aware, 19 November is the monthly cut off for sending an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) for tax month 6 Oct – 5 Nov. This means that any EPS submissions sent after 21:00 will be automatically allocated to the next tax month (6 Nov – 5 Dec).

To ensure all EPS submissions are allocated to the correct month, we advise all our customers to send their EPS submissions before 21:00 on Tuesday 19 November’.

Further Information

• HMRC – Service Availability