Geek

You must submit an EPS every month even if the values are nil. Should you be entitled to Employment Allowance you will reduce your liability once it starts up to £5k https://www.gov.uk/claim-employment-allowance

The RTI only accepts A,B or C. If you dont tick anything it should default to C, and you should then put the employee on 0T if they have not ticked a box on the form. Some software will put in a box D, but this is just for the 'user experience' and still reports C to HMRC - it cannot be left blank or it will fail the whole RTI submission

Your tax code is a cumulative code throughout the tax year that starts on 5th April each year. You cannot split the tax code between different tax years. You can call HMRC on 0300 200 3300 to clarify this

If it is a death in service benefit you can make this payment via the payroll software as a payment after leaving and it may be tax free / allowed to use the old tax code (any payments due to the beneficiaries' that are related to the deceased persons earnings have no NI liability - change this to category X). More information can be found: https://www.gov.uk/what-to-do-when-an-employee-dies/paying-pensioner-died#:~:text=You%20must%20make%20all%20outstanding,out%20their%20final%20pension%20payment. You can make payments for monies owed using the employee's details, and ask the payroll provider to update the bank details to that of the wife (they can do this). If the wife is not an employee steer clear as making her so to make this payment.

The FPS should just have what has been paid that period. If you have used a payroll element to bring the gross pay to zero then there would be noting to report. When you do make this payment that is the point to which you should calculate tax and NI due and report the payment. Don't forget to take into account NMW - if that person has worked hours yet you pay £0 you could be risking breaching NMW

This will be down to employment law and any contractual obligations. If it is not settled in a timely manner they could claim for unlawful deduction of wages or breach of contract so you should get employment law advise

You will need to repay the gross amount, and then your employer will work out any tax due if you are still employed by them - if it is a different tax year, or you have left you may have to claim this back yourself. It is classed as an overpayment of wages so they have to follow HMRC rules on this and what to report. There is no legal requirement for them to ask for the the net pay, and they cannot claim your tax refund on your behalf

@HMRC, many of our clients have reported issues once they have submitted the FPS for the 1st time on the new software resulting in their employees having UC stopped. There seems to be a glitch on the HMRC system that allocates YTD figures to current month pay (FPS is confirmed correct). Their current reply is that the employer needs to ring the helpline (and wait hours) for each case to be corrected manually. As you can imagine from a employer such as a care provider with potentially hundred PAYE references this is not feasible, and leaving vulnerable employees out of pocket is causing an undue amount of stress. The RTI-Data-Item-guide 23-24 clearly states 'The duplicate records will require action by HMRC to correct these as this is not an automatic process. Until this takes place, the employees Personal Tax Account will show 2 records for the same employer, which may prompt contact to the employer and/or HMRC. This scenario can also occur when updating existing employee details onto a new payroll software package.' But not that HMRC systems are adding YTD figures to current month pay. Will you issue a guide to software providers so that they can try and support new clients, as the advise above is misguided to this known issue