Value Added Tax returns for the quarter ended 31 December 2019 should be submitted by Friday 7 February 2020, and any payment which is due should be made electronically by the same date.

 
Large employers are defined as those with a PAYE bill of more than £1,500 per month. You must make a monthly payment of PAYE and NICs by Sunday 19 January 2020 if settled by cheque. If you pay electronically, then you have until Wednesday 22 January to make the payment. Tax retained under the Construction Industry Scheme must also be paid by the same date.

 
Employers must make Third Quarter payments of PAYE and NICs by Sunday 19 January 2020 if settled by cheque. If you pay electronically, then you have until Wednesday 22 January to make the payment. Tax retained under the Construction Industry Scheme must also be paid by the same date.

 
It can happen sometimes that when you are an employer, you have not actually made any wage or salary payments for a PAYE month such as the month from 6 December 2019 to 5 January 2020. In that case you must submit electronically an Employer Payment Summary as a NIL return by Sunday 19 January. This bureaucratic requirement is too easy to overlook.

If you engage a local accountant and business adviser or a payroll bureau to do your wages, then this will be taken care of. In our case we keep a diary and do a batch of payrolls at about the same time each month. Our payroll files are bright yellow like the old P30BC booklet so we do not overlook them. We colour-code all the taxes so green is VAT, red is income tax, blue is corporation tax and yellow is PAYE. The colour purple is used for forced loans to HMRC.

If you no longer want to have a payroll scheme, then you need to close it down in a formal way. You cannot just assume that you can stop sending in monthly returns.