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Using the online PAYE for Employers facilities on HMRC's website, employers can choose to receive forms and reminders from HMRC electronically in a secure "mailbox" instead of receiving the equivalent paper documents. By using the Secure Mailbox Service (SMS) employers are able to print out the documents or, in the case of coding notices, student loan forms and tax credit forms, download the data as csv files, ready for loading into a spreadsheet or payroll system for further processing.
There have been a number of formatting and availability issues with the SMS since it was introduced. This Internet-based service also does not allow automated access to the documents, a task that is routine for employers and payroll bureaux that exchange information with HMRC using Electronic Date Interchange (EDI).
To provide more flexible access to messages from HMRC, the SMS is to be phased out and replaced by the Data Provisioning Service (DPS) from April 2006 onwards. This new service will allow payroll systems to gain access, over the Internet, to HMRC messages and download them for immediate use in the payroll. Employers will be able to "call" the documents at times to suit them, or to automate the process so that the documents are retrieved routinely.
Each new message, e.g. a coding notice or a reminder, will be assigned a unique, sequential index number. These are not numbers that are unique to a particular employer; rather they are unique across all employers. The numbering system will allow for up to 4 billion unique values to be allocated.
Each message that an employer receives, therefore, will have a higher number than the previous message. This means that the payroll system will know which message was last called so that, next time, only messages with higher numbers will be retrieved. This approach also allows employers, in the event of a serious loss of data, to reset the last called number so that earlier messages can be retrieved again. It also allows an agent that is taking over the processing of an employer's payroll from another agent to gain immediate access to all earlier messages sent to the employer.
As with the SMS, the use by an employer of the DPS will be optional. Employers may continue to receive paper documents if they prefer.
All forms relevant to the 2006/07 tax year will be posted to the DPS. Consequently, bulk P9s will be issued to the DPS in February 2006, but all P6s, student loan forms and other reminders will continue to be sent to the SMS until April 2006. The SMS will no longer be used from April 2006 onwards.
...back to 13 October 2005
Further information:
Online Services: HM Revenue & Customs Email Bulletins for PAYE Software Developers
PAYE Online for Employers: Internet Service Technical Pack for Software Developers - Outgoing Data Provisioning Service (DPS)
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For Payroll and Human Resource Professionals
