Employee share plans: Extension of deadline for filing annual returns to 4 August 2015

HMRC has confirmed that, due to recent technical issues with its online service, the deadline for filing annual returns has been extended to 4 August 2015.

Annual return deadline

As set out in our recent updates, companies operating employee share plans (whether tax-advantaged or unapproved) had to register their arrangements and submit their annual returns online to HMRC by 6 July 2015.

However, due to technical problems experienced with the HMRC Employment Related Securities (ERS) Online Service, the deadline for filing annual returns has been extended to 4 August 2015.

The technical problems meant that the ERS Online Service was not available around the time of the original deadline, so some companies were unable to file their returns.

HMRC has confirmed that the ERS Online Service is live again. If a company files its returns (for the tax year ending 5 April 2015) on or before 4 August 2015 HMRC will not charge a penalty.

The templates to be completed and submitted with the annual returns are available on the HMRC website. 

HMRC is still investigating whether companies that filed their returns before the original deadline and received an on-screen acknowledgement might need to re-submit their returns.  It will publish a further message about this in due course.