Paying your taxes should be easier now that HMRC accepts funds transferred through the Faster Payments System (FPS). This means you can pay your tax on any day of the year, 24 hours a day, if your banking allows that.
It’s worth checking the maximum value your bank permits for an FPS transaction as this can be as low as £10,000 for certain business accounts. Also check exactly when the bank will process the FPS transaction, as some banks won’t accept advance payments to be made on a weekend.
If you have a large tax payment coming up, such as VAT, the payment will fail if your bank’s FPS limits are not sufficient, even if you have the cash available in your account. A failure to pay VAT on time can generate a penalty of between 2% and 15% of the late paid VAT, even if the payment arrives with HMRC only one day late.
When you need to pay HMRC from an overseas bank account, you must give the International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and bank identifier code for the HMRC bank account. See gov.uk for details. But be careful to pick up the IBAN for the bank account specific to the tax you are paying, as there are different accounts for different taxes.
