Received a late filing penalty notice then read on..
HMRC have recently issued a number of P11D interim penalty notices in error. If you have been the recipient of one of these letters then HMRC’s recent message sent to the Chartered Institute of Taxation will be of interest to you:
“The P11D(b) Penalty Warning Letter is not a penalty notice. It advises employers that they may be charged a penalty and to file their P11D(b) as soon as possible to prevent the penalty increasing further.

This year we issued P11D(b) Penalty Warning Letters where the P11D(b) information was not received by the 21st July.
We have recently identified an internal processing problem with these Penalty Warning Letters, which has impacted a number of employers. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused. We are working tirelessly to resolve the problem and capture these forms as quickly as possible. However we believe that the majority of the Penalty Warning Letters have been issued correctly and have not been impacted by the internal processing error.
We are recommending that if the employer/agent has received a Penalty Warning Letter that they submit another P11D(b) to ensure that the correct information is reflected on our records, in case the original P11D(b) has been lost in transit to HMRC.”
This explanation however prompted two questions to be asked of the Revenue.
Question 1 – If the original submission has been lost in transit how is submitting a duplicate return going to avoid attracting a penalty when all HMRC have to go off is the date the duplicate was submitted?
Answer – If the processing teams are unable to locate/trace the original P11D(b) then a Penalty will be charged in this scenario. The Employer can appeal in writing against this penalty and we will have Lines to Take for the Appeals Team to support these employers.
Question 2 – If the original submission is subsequently processed what procedure is in place to stop the duplicate being treated as an amended return that has been submitted late and therefore results in a penalty being charged?
Answer – If we receive a duplicate P11D(b) the information will only be captured onto our systems as an amendment if the amounts on the form differ to those already held. If the amounts are an exact match of those already held on our records then no action will be taken.
I recently received a penalty warning letter even though I submitted my P11D back in May. The advice given to me by the HMRC Employers Helpline was to re-send the P11D but with a covering note explaining the issue and stating that there are no changes from the original submission.
I also received one of these letters after having filed the original P11D(b) and P11Ds in late May.
On contacting HMRC they were, for once, very helpful as they had printed the wrong return address on the P11D(b)form and consequently have all the forms but in the wrong place (central office instead of local tax office. As I did not owe any NI on the misplaced P11Ds filed in May, they said I did not need to send a duplicate and corrected the entry on their system whilst I was on the phone.