TL;DR
- GOV.UK sets five year end tasks against four deadlines: the final payroll report on or before the last payday, employee payroll records and software updated from 6 April, a P60 by 31 May, and expenses and benefits reported by 6 July.
- Week 53 exists because of the calendar, not the software. HMRC defines tax week 53 as the odd days at the end of the last complete tax week, “(5 April or in leap years, 4 April and 5 April)”, which are “treated as a whole tax week”.
- Two GOV.UK pages describe the week 53 P800 in opposite directions. The payroll annual reporting guide says HMRC writes to “employees who owe tax”; the Basic PAYE Tools user guide says employees “who have overpaid tax”. CWG2 settles it.
Payroll year end is not one job. It is a short sequence of filings and updates that straddle two dates, 5 April and 6 April, and what goes wrong is almost never the arithmetic. It is the order, the flag nobody ticked, or the extra payday nobody put in the calendar.
This article takes the sequence in the order HMRC publishes it, for an employer in the United Kingdom: the final Full Payment Submission, when an Employer Payment Summary replaces it, P60s, records and tax codes for 6 April, week 53 from HMRC's own definition, corrections after the final submission, and what a late submission costs. It is general information, not tax or legal advice, and the figures change every tax year.
Year end is the point where missing people data turns expensive, because a leaver recorded late or a pay rise agreed in a chat message now sits inside a year-to-date figure. See how New Dynamics workflows put a named owner and a due date on each step, so the facts reach payroll before the cut-off instead of after the final filing. Stated plainly: New Dynamics does not run payroll, file to HMRC or move money. For the monthly cycle itself, see our post on the payroll process. This article picks up where that cycle ends.
The payroll year end sequence, and the four dates
GOV.UK's guide to payroll annual reporting and tasks frames the whole thing as two obligations: "report to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) on the previous tax year (which ends on 5 April) and give your employees a P60", then "prepare for the new tax year, which starts on 6 April".
The same page publishes the tasks and their deadlines as a table. Quoted as it stands:
| What you need to do | When |
|---|---|
| Send your final payroll report of the year | On or before your employees' payday |
| Update employee payroll records | From 6 April |
| Update payroll software | From 6 April, or earlier if the software provider asks you to |
| Give your employees a P60 | By 31 May |
| Report employee expenses and benefits | By 6 July |
A fifth date hides in the last row. GOV.UK's page on reporting expenses and benefits adds the payment: "Pay any Class 1A National Insurance due on the taxable expenses and benefits you've provided. Your payment must be received by 22 July (or 19 July if you're paying by post)."
The boundary itself is worth stating once. HMRC's CWG2 guide for 2026 to 2027 defines it: "A tax year is a period starting on 6 April in one year and ending on 5 April in the following year. For example, the 2026 to 2027 tax year starts on 6 April 2026 and ends on 5 April 2027."
The final Full Payment Submission
The first task has no deadline of its own. GOV.UK's page on how to send your final payroll report ties it to the last pay run: "Send your final Full Payment Submission (FPS) on or before your employees' last payday of the tax year (which ends on 5 April)."
Two instructions follow it, and both are routinely missed. First, the flag: "Put 'Yes' in the 'Final submission for year' field (if available) in your payroll software." Nothing else about the FPS tells HMRC it is the last one. Second, the scheme-level view: "If you run more than one payroll under the same PAYE scheme reference (for example for employees you pay weekly and monthly), include the end-of-year information in your last report." The end-of-year information belongs in whichever of those runs goes last, not in both.
Year end does not suspend the normal Real Time Information rule. GOV.UK's guidance on payroll information to report to HMRC still requires pay, payrolled benefits and deductions to be reported "in a Full Payment Submission (FPS) on or before their payday (unless an exception applies)".
When an Employer Payment Summary is needed instead
An EPS reports what an FPS cannot: months with no payments, and amounts that reduce your bill. At year end it is also the fallback filing. GOV.UK lists four cases where "You should send your final report in an EPS instead of an FPS":
- "you forgot to put 'Yes' in the 'Final submission for year' field in your last FPS"
- "your software does not have a 'Final Submission for year' field on the FPS"
- "you did not pay anyone in the final pay period of the tax year"
- "you sent your final FPS early and you did not pay anyone for one or more full tax months in the last tax year"
The first is the one to remember, because it is the recovery route for the mistake nearly everyone makes once. You sent the last FPS without the flag. You do not re-send the FPS. You send an EPS. The EPS also has its own monthly deadline that matters in April: GOV.UK says to send it "by the 19th of the following tax month for HMRC to apply any reduction (for example, statutory pay) on what you'll owe from your FPS."
Week 53, and why it exists at all
This is the part people get wrong, so start with the calendar rather than the software. Week 53 is not a glitch.
HMRC's CWG2 guide defines a tax week: "Tax weeks are periods of 7 days which follow on from each other starting on 6 April each year. The first tax week is 6 April to 12 April inclusive, the second tax week is 13 April to 19 April inclusive, and so on."
Fifty-two periods of seven days is 364 days. A year is 365, or 366. So CWG2 continues: "The odd day or days at the end of the last complete tax week in the year, (5 April or in leap years, 4 April and 5 April) are treated as a whole tax week, which is tax week 53."
That leftover is the entire explanation. If a weekly payday lands on one of those odd days, the tax year holds one more payday than the usual fifty-two.
What HMRC says to do
CWG2 section 1.13, "Payments made in week 53", sets out three cases. Where you pay weekly, employees "will have 53 weekly paydays instead of the usual 52", "the extra payday is called week 53", and you "use '53' as the tax number when you make a 'week 53' payment to HMRC on an FPS". Fortnightly pay gives "27 fortnightly paydays instead of the usual 26" and the number is '54'. Four-weekly pay gives "14 paydays instead of the usual 13" and the number is '56'.
The main GOV.UK guide puts the same thing in field terms, and is clear about who calculates it: "Your payroll software will work out 'week 53' payments for you." In the 'Tax week number' field you put "'53' if you pay your employees weekly", "'54' if you pay them fortnightly", "'56' if you pay them every 4 weeks".
Week 53 and the tax code
The extra payday is taxed on a non-cumulative basis, which is why it does not simply pile onto the year's totals. CWG2 says that for employees on a week 1 coding you "simply treat the extra payday as another week 1 payment". For an employee on a cumulative code, compare total free pay to date at week 52 with total pay for the year: where free pay is equal to or more, the instruction is "do not deduct any PAYE from the payment to the employee", and otherwise you work out the deduction by reference to the pay for week 53, 54 or 56 less the free pay shown in tax tables A. The table to use is week 1 for weekly pay, week 2 for fortnightly, week 4 for four-weekly.
One CWG2 instruction exists purely to stop a temporary workaround becoming permanent: "Do not change the final tax code to week 1 if the only reason you have used the week 1 table is to calculate a payment on week 53."
Two GOV.UK pages disagree about the P800
Week 53 effectively hands the employee an extra week of tax-free allowance, so the year's deductions can come out lower than the annual calculation gives. HMRC settles the difference afterwards, and two of its own pages describe that settlement in opposite directions.
The payroll annual reporting guide says: "HMRC will send a P800 form to any employees who owe tax following a 'week 53' payment."
The Basic PAYE Tools user guide says: "HMRC will send a P800 form to any employees who have overpaid tax following a 'week 53' payment so that they can claim a refund."
Both are live GOV.UK pages. The first governs, and CWG2 is why: its week 53 section tells employers what to do "If after following this guidance you're approached by an employee who has been advised by HMRC that they have underpaid PAYE", and the answer is to "confirm to them that you have not made an error in your payroll". HMRC's detailed employer guide anticipates an underpayment, not a refund. Treat the Basic PAYE Tools wording as the outlier, warn affected employees that a P800 may arrive, and do not change your payroll to try to prevent it.
P60s: who gets one, and by when
GOV.UK's page on how to give employees a P60 sets the test by employment on one date: "Give a P60 to all employees on your payroll who are working for you on the last day of the tax year (5 April). The P60 summarises their total pay and deductions for the year." The deadline is absolute: "You must give your employees a P60 by 31 May."
Someone who left during the year gets no P60 from you. They got a P45. If a P60 already issued turns out to be wrong, GOV.UK accepts either a "new P60 marked 'replacement'", which "can be paper or electronic", or a "letter confirming the change".
A P60 is a document employees keep for years, so how long you hold the data behind it matters. Our post on payroll records covers the retention rule and the categories it applies to.
Updating payroll records and tax codes for 6 April
GOV.UK's page on how to update employee payroll records lists three steps for each employee working for you on 6 April: "prepare a payroll record", "identify the correct tax code to use in the new tax year", and "enter their tax code in your payroll software".
It also sets a scope wider than the people currently at their desks. Include "all employees you pay in the tax year, no matter how much you pay them" and "any employee who has worked for you in the current tax year (since 6 April) even if they've already left".
Two notices drive the codes, and they are not interchangeable. GOV.UK says HMRC will send "a P9T form for any employees who need a new tax code", and "a P9X form with general changes for employees whose tax code ends with an 'L', 'M' or 'N'". So a P9T is per employee and a P9X is general.
The current P9X, tax codes to use from 6 April 2026, published on 19 February 2026, is explicit about both branches. For employees without a new code: "Copy the authorised tax code from the 2025 to 2026 payroll record and continue to use for 2026 to 2027." Then the instruction that catches anyone operating a temporary code: "Do not copy or carry over any 'week 1' or 'month 1' markings."
For employees with a new code, keep "the form P9(T) or other tax code notification with the most recent date on for each employee", scrap earlier ones for the same employee, and update codes where a notification lands after the records are set up. P9X warns that HMRC "will not send a new tax code for every employee", so silence means carry the existing code forward, not wait. Where a lot of notices arrive, GOV.UK suggests a tool rather than a process change: "If you get a lot of tax code notices, it may be faster to use HMRC's PAYE Desktop Viewer."
The figures that change on 6 April, and where to find them
Rates and thresholds change at the start of each tax year, so any list of them in an article like this one dates. Two places carry the current set.
GOV.UK's guidance on rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027 opens with its scope line, "Unless otherwise stated, the following figures apply from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027", and gives the standard employee personal allowance for that year as "£242 per week", "£1,048 per month" and "£12,570 per year". P9X confirms the same figures from the payroll side: "For 2026 to 2027 the basic Personal Allowance will be £12,570 for the whole of the UK. The threshold (starting point) for PAYE is £242 per week (£1,048 per month)", with "The emergency code is 1257L for all employees."
The software side is the other half. GOV.UK's page on how to update payroll software says to follow your provider's instructions so it uses the latest rates and thresholds for "Income Tax", "National Insurance" and "student loan repayments". Check the figures against GOV.UK for the tax year you are actually running, not against last year's payslips. What may lawfully be taken off pay is covered in our post on payroll deductions.
One structural change already has a date. HMRC's interim guidance on the phased introduction of mandatory payrolling for benefits in kind, updated on 15 June 2026, says real-time reporting of certain benefits "will now be phased in. Phase 1 will commence from 6 April 2027 and phase 2 will commence from 6 April 2028." Phase 1 covers "company cars", "car fuel", "vans", "van fuel" and "employer-provided medical benefits"; phase 2 brings in most of the rest but "excludes loans and accommodation which will remain voluntary." If you report those benefits once a year today, the year end task list changes before then.
If you find a mistake after the final submission
The route depends on the type of error and when you notice it. GOV.UK's table on the final payroll report page gives three rows, quoted here:
| Mistake | When | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong payments or deductions | By 19 April | "Send an additional FPS with corrected year-to-date figures, and enter '0' in 'Pay in this period'" |
| Wrong payments or deductions | After 19 April | "Send an FPS showing the correct year-to-date amounts." |
| Wrong payment date | By 5 April | "Send an additional FPS with the correct payment date (put '0' in 'Pay in this period' and give the year-to-date figures)" |
19 April is the hinge, and the same page gives the route after it: "From 20 April you can send an FPS to correct your 2025 to 2026 tax year payroll data by giving the year-to-date figures." That sentence names the 2025 to 2026 tax year because GOV.UK rewrites it annually, so read it as the tax year that has just ended.
The separate guidance on correcting an FPS or EPS covers older years and makes two useful points. On liability: "You'll only be charged a penalty for a mistake if you did not take reasonable care or did it deliberately." On earlier years: "If the mistake was in the tax years between 6 April 2020 and 5 April 2026 (submit another FPS with the correct year to date figures)." The Earlier Year Update is gone, and a corrected FPS is the route. One trap on the same page: if the 'payment after leaving' box is ticked, do not enter the same amounts in the 'pay in period' and 'pay in year-to-date' fields, because "Doing this will create a duplicate record for your employee."
What a late submission costs
GOV.UK's guidance on what happens if you do not report payroll information on time says a penalty can arise where your FPS "was late", or where you did not send "the expected number of FPSs", or did not send an EPS "when you did not pay any employees in a tax month".
The amounts are a monthly penalty set by headcount. GOV.UK's table: "1 to 9" employees, £100; "10 to 49", £200; "50 to 249", £300; "250 or more", £400. If you run more than one scheme, "you can be charged penalties for each".
Three situations where HMRC "will not charge a penalty" sit on the same page. Where the FPS "is late but all reported payments on the FPS are within 3 days of your employees' payday", with the caveat that "employers who regularly file after the payment date but within 3 days may be contacted or considered for a penalty". Where "you're a new employer and you sent your first FPS within 30 days of paying an employee". And where "it's your first failure in the tax year to send a report on time", which "does not apply to employers who register with HMRC as an annual scheme".
Not filing at all is worse than filing late, because HMRC fills the gap. The same guidance says it "may raise a specified charge based on an estimate of how much we think you should pay", and that such a charge "does not replace the need for you to send your FPS or EPS".
Frequently asked questions
When is the payroll year end deadline in the UK?
There is no single date. GOV.UK sets the final payroll report "on or before your employees' payday" for the last pay run of the tax year ending 5 April, employee payroll records and software to be updated "From 6 April", a P60 to employees "By 31 May", and expenses and benefits reported "By 6 July". Any Class 1A National Insurance on those benefits must be received by 22 July, or 19 July if paying by post.
What is a week 53 payment?
It is an extra payday in a tax year. HMRC's CWG2 guide defines tax weeks as "periods of 7 days" starting on 6 April, and treats "The odd day or days at the end of the last complete tax week in the year, (5 April or in leap years, 4 April and 5 April)" as "a whole tax week, which is tax week 53". If a weekly payday falls there, employees have 53 paydays rather than 52 and you put '53' in the tax week number field. Fortnightly pay uses '54', four-weekly '56'.
Who has to be given a P60, and by when?
GOV.UK: "Give a P60 to all employees on your payroll who are working for you on the last day of the tax year (5 April)." The deadline is 31 May. Someone who left part way through the year receives a P45 instead. To change a P60 already issued, GOV.UK accepts either a new P60 marked 'replacement' or a letter confirming the change.
I forgot to flag my FPS as the final submission. What now?
Send an Employer Payment Summary. GOV.UK lists this as one of four cases where you "should send your final report in an EPS instead of an FPS", alongside software with no final submission field, not having paid anyone in the final pay period, and having sent the final FPS early then paid nobody for one or more full tax months.
What is the difference between a P9T and a P9X?
Both are tax code notices for the new year, at different levels. GOV.UK says HMRC will send "a P9T form for any employees who need a new tax code" and "a P9X form with general changes for employees whose tax code ends with an 'L', 'M' or 'N'". P9X adds that HMRC "will not send a new tax code for every employee", so where no notice arrives you carry the authorised code forward without any week 1 or month 1 marking.
What is the penalty for a late Full Payment Submission?
GOV.UK publishes a monthly penalty by headcount: £100 for 1 to 9 employees, £200 for 10 to 49, £300 for 50 to 249 and £400 for 250 or more, charged per PAYE scheme. HMRC will not charge a penalty where all payments on a late FPS are within 3 days of payday, where a new employer filed a first FPS within 30 days of paying someone, or on a first failure in the tax year, which does not apply to annual schemes.
Your next step: put the year end dates in the calendar now
- Write the four deadlines into next year's payroll calendar beside the paydays: final FPS with the last payday, records and software from 6 April, P60s by 31 May, expenses and benefits by 6 July.
- Check whether any weekly, fortnightly or four-weekly payday falls on 5 April, or on 4 or 5 April in a leap year. If it does, plan for week 53, 54 or 56 and warn employees a P800 may follow.
- Name one person who ticks the 'Final submission for year' field, and a deputy who knows the EPS fallback if they do not.
- Set a people data cut-off in March, so starters, leavers and pay changes land before the final submission rather than inside a correction.
Year end puts your employee data on paper and into HMRC's hands, which makes it a sensible moment to review how that data is held and for how long. Read and download our employee data protection guide for a practical approach to retention, access and records. The guide is free to read, and the PDF uses our short download form.
Want the leavers, contract changes and approved pay decisions to reach payroll before the final submission, each with an owner and a date? Book a New Dynamics demo and bring your current year end checklist. You can also email contact@new-dynamics.com.
