UK payroll deadlines and the employer calendar
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Running UK payroll on time means meeting a series of fixed deadlines spread across the tax year, each with its own consequence if missed. Miss the wrong one and you face penalties, interest or unhappy employees — so knowing the calendar in advance is the most practical thing you can do.
The tax year and its fixed anchor points
The UK tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April the following year. The current tax year is 2026/27. Everything in the payroll calendar anchors to this cycle.
Within it, there are three categories of deadline: recurring obligations that happen every pay period, annual submission deadlines, and payment deadlines to HMRC. Each works differently and demands a different type of preparation.
Real Time Information: the recurring obligation
Every time you pay an employee, you must submit a Full Payment Submission (FPS) to HMRC on or before payday. This is the Real Time Information (RTI) requirement. There is no monthly batching — the submission must accompany each pay run, whether you pay weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
The FPS tells HMRC what each employee earned, what income tax was deducted, and what National Insurance was collected. Employees pay National Insurance at 8% on earnings within the main band and 2% above the upper earnings limit. You pay employer National Insurance at 13.8% on earnings above the secondary threshold.
If you realise you have made an error after submission, you correct it through an Earlier Year Update (EYU) or an amended FPS, depending on when the error occurred.
Late or missing FPS submissions attract automatic penalties from HMRC, scaled by the number of employees on your payroll. Getting into the habit of submitting on or before payday — not the day after — is the simplest way to stay compliant.
Payment deadlines to HMRC
Submitting the FPS tells HMRC what you owe. Actually paying it is a separate step.
For most employers, PAYE and National Insurance collected in a given tax month (which runs from the 6th to the 5th) must reach HMRC by the 19th of the following month if paying by cheque, or by the 22nd if paying electronically. The electronic deadline is the one most businesses use, but note it is a cleared-funds deadline — the money must be in HMRC's account by the 22nd, not just sent.
Large employers — broadly those with a monthly PAYE bill above a certain threshold — must pay in quarterly instalments within the tax month itself. If you are approaching that threshold, check with your payroll provider or accountant about whether it applies to you.
Annual deadlines: P60 and P11D
Two annual submissions sit outside the recurring rhythm and catch employers out if left to the last minute.
P60 — by 31 May. After the tax year closes on 5 April, you must issue every employee who was on your payroll on the last day of the tax year with a P60. This document summarises their total pay and deductions for the year. The deadline is 31 May. You do not send P60s to HMRC — they go to employees only — but you do need to have completed your final FPS and any Employer Payment Summary (EPS) submissions before you can produce accurate figures.
P11D — by 6 July. If you provide any employees or directors with benefits in kind — company cars, private medical insurance, loans above the HMRC threshold, and similar — you must report those on a P11D form by 6 July following the end of the tax year. You also submit a P11D(b) to declare the Class 1A National Insurance you owe on those benefits, and pay that Class 1A by 22 July (electronic payment). If you operate a salary sacrifice or payrolling-of-benefits scheme, some of this is handled differently, but the July deadline for Class 1A still applies.
Auto-enrolment and the ongoing pension obligation
Pension auto-enrolment is not a one-off event. Every pay period, you must calculate qualifying earnings, deduct the employee contribution of at least 5%, add your employer contribution of at least 3%, and pay the combined amount to the pension scheme within the window set by that scheme — typically by the 22nd of the month following deduction.
You also have ongoing re-enrolment duties every three years, where you assess and re-enrol eligible workers who have previously opted out. Missing this cyclical obligation is a separate compliance risk to the monthly payment deadline.
Keeping the calendar manageable
Most payroll software generates reminders for RTI submissions automatically. The gaps where employers struggle are typically the annual ones — P11D preparation in particular tends to get deprioritised until June, leaving very little time. Building a simple internal calendar at the start of each tax year, with the 31 May and 6 July dates blocked out as projects rather than single-day tasks, reduces the pressure considerably. The Employment Rights Act 2025 has also strengthened day-one rights for employees, which adds weight to getting payroll set up correctly from the first pay run rather than correcting errors later.
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