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P@Ye
The Inland Revenue are keen for more people to make returns over the internet. Presumably this will enable the Revenue to replace more humans with computers, which may or may not be a good thing for the rest of us. But new rules have been brought in this year to require e-filing of annual PAYE returns, so we will have to like it or lump it.
 Large employers (with 250 or more employees) will have to do this from the end of the 2004/05 tax year, a year and a half away. Those with 50 - 249 employees will have to comply a year later, at the end of 2005/06.
Smaller employers will not have to comply until 2009/10, but then anyone who employs anyone else within PAYE - even people with nannies, not just businesses - will be required to do so. Of course, you can get an accountant to do it for you, if you don't want to go online yourself - or if you don't trust the Revenue's assurances that it will all be very simple.
The good news is that the Revenue are proposing to pay small employers an incentive to join up early - £250 for immediate entry at the end of 2004/05, and potentially a total of £825 over 5 years. Although that isn't a fortune, it's more of a serious incentive than the £10 offered for filing your income tax return by internet a couple of years ago. So it will be worth a small employer looking at in 18 months, even though you won't be required to for another 5 years.
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