Two items from HMRC's Employment Related Securities team.
They report that some 3,400 returns that were filed before 3 July 2015 became corrupted and HMRC cannot read the data. This is HMRC’s fault and they have written to the company secretary of each affected company. Please must re-submit by 1/1/2016.
Some 3,200 companies registered schemes in 2014/15 and have yet to submit their returns for the year. They should submit them in order to avoid a penalty.
There is concern that many of the 3,200 schemes were set up in error, or they were set up for schemes that never came to fruition. Unfortunately HMRC has not provided any method of deleting such a “scheme”. HMRC advises that the only way to delete a scheme is to enter a “final event date” for the scheme.
This may be difficult to understand because something that is not a scheme cannot have a final event. In practice you do it like this:
(for example) If the scheme was set up in error enter the final event date as the date on which you set it up, or 6/4/2014 (so you back date the final event). You must then submit a nil return for 2014/15 for that “scheme”.
