Full Payment Submission (FPS): What to Report, When, and Corrections

A Full Payment Submission is the report you send to HMRC every time you pay an employee, listing what you paid them, what you deducted, and who they are. It must reach HMRC on or before each payday, and it travels through HMRC-recognised payroll software using your Government Gateway credentials.¹ The real-time nature of the FPS is the whole point: HMRC sees your payroll as it happens rather than waiting for a year-end summary.

Employee Information on Every FPS

Each FPS carries a block of personal details for every employee being paid: full legal name, date of birth, current home address, and National Insurance number. If you don’t yet have a new hire’s NI number, leave it blank but make sure the address is there so HMRC can trace the person.² Update these fields as soon as an employee changes their legal name or moves.

Every employee also needs a unique payroll ID (your internal reference) and the tax code HMRC has assigned to them. The standard code for 2025–26 is 1257L, reflecting the £12,570 personal allowance, but you should always use whatever code HMRC has issued for a given employee rather than defaulting to the standard.³

Starters and Leavers

When a new employee hands you a P45, the information on that form feeds into their first FPS. If they don’t have a P45, they complete a Starter Checklist covering their NI number, start date, whether they’ve had other employment or benefits since 6 April, and any student or postgraduate loan. The answers determine which starter declaration code you select in your payroll software, and that code tells HMRC how to set up their tax treatment.⁴

When someone leaves, report their final working date on the FPS that covers their last payment. The leaving date and the final pay figures go on the same submission, provided both fall in the same tax year.²

Pay and Deduction Figures

The financial core is straightforward: report what you paid and what you took off. Include gross pay (the total before deductions), taxable pay for the period, and pay subject to Class 1 National Insurance contributions. Those three figures are often different, and your payroll software tracks them separately.⁵

On the deduction side, you report income tax withheld, both the employee’s and employer’s National Insurance contributions, and any pension contributions. Statutory payments — Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, and similar entitlements — go into gross pay at the time they’re paid, with tax and NI calculated normally on top of them.⁵

Student Loan Deductions

Student and postgraduate loan repayments have their own FPS fields, and the plan type matters because each has a different threshold. As of April 2026:

Plan 1: 9% of earnings above £26,900 per year
Plan 2: 9% of earnings above £29,385 per year
Plan 4: 9% of earnings above £33,795 per year
Plan 5: 9% of earnings above £25,000 per year
Postgraduate loan: 6% of earnings above £21,000 per year

If an employee doesn’t know their plan and you can’t work it out from a P45, Starter Checklist, or SL1 notice from HMRC, default to Plan 5 in your payroll software until HMRC sends the correct plan details.⁶

Benefits in Kind From April 2027

Most taxable benefits, such as company cars and private medical insurance, can currently be reported either through the FPS (payrolling benefits) or on annual P11D forms. From April 2027, the voluntary approach ends: reporting most benefits through the FPS becomes mandatory, with income tax and Class 1A NI calculated and paid in real time alongside normal earnings.⁷

In practice, you divide the annual taxable value of each benefit by the number of pay periods and include that figure on every FPS. If the value isn’t known precisely at the start of the year, use a reasonable estimate and adjust later. You cannot deduct more than 50% of an employee’s pay in tax, so if combined tax on salary and benefits hits that ceiling, the excess carries forward. Employment-related loans and accommodation are temporarily exempt from mandatory payrolling and will still go on P11Ds.⁷

The On-or-Before Deadline

Your FPS must reach HMRC on or before the date you pay your employees.¹ Payday means the date funds are made available to the employee, not the date you initiate the bank transfer or the date the money clears. Monthly pay on the 28th means the FPS goes in on or before the 28th, every month.

When a scheduled payday falls on a weekend or bank holiday and you pay staff early, enter the regular payday as the payment date on the FPS. Record the contractual date, not the date you processed the payment.¹ Getting this wrong can trigger unnecessary penalty notices or misalign your records with HMRC’s tax month boundaries.

Late Reporting Reason Codes

When you genuinely can’t file on time, the FPS must include a late reporting reason code:

A: Notional payment by a third party or overseas employer to an expatriate worker
B: Notional payment relating to employment-related securities
C: Other notional payment
D: Payment subject to Class 1 NI but reported on P11D for tax
E: No requirement to maintain a deductions working sheet
F: Impractical to report work done on the day
G: Reasonable excuse
H: Correction to an earlier submission

The code affects how HMRC assesses penalties. Codes G and H do not trigger automatic late filing charges. For codes A through D, HMRC only flags a potential failure if the FPS arrives more than 14 days after the end of the relevant tax month. For codes E and F, the window is 7 days after the payment date.⁸ HMRC specifically warns against defaulting to code G for every late submission and will scrutinise repeated use.

Late Filing Penalties

HMRC charges monthly penalties for late FPS submissions, scaled to workforce size:

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

Charges accrue for every month the FPS is overdue. You won’t be charged if the FPS arrives within three days of payday (though repeated near-misses may still draw attention), if you’re a new employer and send your first FPS within 30 days of paying an employee, or if it’s your first late filing in the tax year.⁹ The first-failure exemption does not apply to employers registered as annual schemes. If you receive a penalty you believe is wrong, you generally have 30 days from the date of the penalty notice to contact HMRC or file a formal appeal.

The Final FPS of the Tax Year

Your last FPS of the year carries an extra requirement. Set the “Final submission for year” indicator to “Yes” in your payroll software before sending it. That flag tells HMRC no more payments will be reported under your PAYE scheme for that tax year.¹⁰ The deadline is on or before your employees’ last payday of the year (the tax year ends on 5 April). If you run multiple payrolls under the same PAYE reference, set the indicator on whichever FPS goes out last.

When You Send an EPS Instead

The FPS isn’t the only report your payroll sends. The Employer Payment Summary handles reductions to what you owe HMRC and flags months with no payments.

You send an EPS alongside your FPS when you need to:

Reclaim statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, neonatal care, parental bereavement, or shared parental payments
Claim the Employment Allowance (once per tax year)
Reclaim Construction Industry Scheme deductions as a limited company
Report the Apprenticeship Levy if your connected employers’ total pay bill exceeds £3 million

You send an EPS instead of an FPS when you haven’t paid any employees in a tax month. Sending neither is a mistake: if HMRC receives no FPS and no EPS for a tax month, it may estimate what you owe or charge a penalty. If you know in advance that no one will be paid for a stretch of up to 12 months, enter the dates in the “Period of inactivity” fields on the EPS.¹¹

The EPS deadline is the 19th of the month following the tax month in question. Reclaiming statutory maternity pay for the tax month ending 5 June, for example, means the EPS must reach HMRC by 19 June for the reduction to apply to that month’s PAYE bill.¹¹ Most employers can recover 92% of statutory family-related payments through the EPS; employers who qualify for Small Employers’ Relief recover 103%.¹²

Correcting a Previous FPS

If you reported the wrong payment date, incorrect year-to-date figures, or the wrong tax code, send another FPS with the correct year-to-date figures for the tax year where the mistake occurred.¹³

For a wrong payment date, use late reporting reason code H and submit the corrected FPS by the 19th of the tax month after you sent the original. If the wrong date fell in a different tax month from the correct one, you’ll also need to realign your payroll to the right tax period.¹³

One common trap: when correcting a payment after an employee has already left and the “payment after leaving” box is ticked, enter 0.00 in the “pay in period” field while keeping the year-to-date figure the same as the previous FPS. Entering the same amount in both fields creates a duplicate record.¹³

Keeping the Records After You File

Filing isn’t the end of the obligation. Keep your payroll records for three years from the end of the tax year they relate to: what you paid each employee, deductions made, copies of reports sent to HMRC, payments made to HMRC, employee leave and sickness absences, tax code notices, and details of taxable expenses or benefits.¹⁴ Save the acknowledgment that HMRC’s servers send back after each submission; it’s your proof of filing if a penalty dispute arises.

If your records are incomplete when HMRC comes looking, HMRC can estimate the amount you owe and charge a penalty of up to £3,000 for failing to maintain adequate records.¹⁴ If you have fewer than 10 employees and want a free filing option, HMRC’s Basic PAYE Tools handles most payroll tasks including FPS and EPS submissions.¹⁵

1
GOV.UK. Running Payroll: Reporting to HMRC: FPS
2
GOV.UK. What Payroll Information to Report to HMRC
3
GOV.UK. Rates and Thresholds for Employers 2025 to 2026
4
GOV.UK. Starter Checklist for PAYE
5
GOV.UK. 2025 to 2026: Employer Further Guide to PAYE and National Insurance Contributions
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GOV.UK. Student Loan and Postgraduate Loan Repayment Guidance for Employers
7
GOV.UK. Technical Note: Mandating the Reporting of Benefits in Kind and Expenses Through Payroll Software – An Update
8
GOV.UK. April 14 Data Items – Additional Guidance
9
GOV.UK. What Happens if You Do Not Report Payroll Information on Time
10
GOV.UK. Annual Reporting and Tasks: Send Your Final Payroll Report
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GOV.UK. Reporting to HMRC: Employer Payment Summary (EPS)
12
GOV.UK. Get Financial Help With Statutory Pay
13
GOV.UK. Fix Problems With Running Payroll: You Made a Mistake in Your FPS or EPS
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GOV.UK. PAYE and Payroll for Employers: Keeping Records
15
GOV.UK. Download HMRC’s Basic PAYE Tools