What is an employer payment summary?
Answered 17 March 2026
HMRC Guidance / Practice
An Employer Payment Summary (EPS) is an RTI (Real Time Information) submission that an employer sends to HMRC. It serves several distinct purposes:
What it is used to report
An employer can submit an EPS to advise HMRC that:
- No payments have been made to employees in a tax month (meaning no Full Payment Submission is due)
- They will not be making payments to employees for a future period (a period of inactivity)
- They have ceased employing staff
What it is used to recover
An EPS also tells HMRC that the employer wishes to recover:
- Statutory payments
- NIC compensation on statutory payments
- Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) deductions suffered (limited companies only)
- An amount under the Regional National Insurance Contributions Holiday for New Businesses (NICs holiday)
Key technical features
- All entries on an EPS must be year-to-date calculations
- A single EPS can cover one or more months — it is not necessary to submit one each time a statutory payment is made
- An EPS does not include individual employee information
- EPS submissions received between the 20th of the month and the 5th of the next month are sent to ETMP on the 6th; submissions received between the 6th and 19th are sent daily
Role at end of year
The final FPS or EPS includes an indicator that it is the final return, along with various declarations. At the end of the tax year, the year-to-date data from the final FPS for each employment is used to create the record of earnings and contributions.
Additionally, if an employer makes an adjustment to a previous month's pay bill affecting their levy liability, they should account for this change in their next EPS.
Citation sources
If an employer makes an adjustment to a previous month’s pay bill, which in turn affects their levy liability, they should account for this change in levy liability in their next Employer Payment Summary (EPS). To make adjustments see https://www.gov.uk/payroll-errors/correcting-your-fps-or-eps.
There’s no need for an RTI employer to prepare end of year returns. The final FPS (Full Payment Summary) or EPS (Employer Payment Summary) includes an indicator that this is the final return and various declarations. At the end of the tax year, the year to date (YTD) data from the final FPS for each employment is used to create the record of earnings and contributions on NPS. RTI changed employers’ obligations as follows: when they report earnings and NICs (see NIM11520) what data they report (s
An employer can submit an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) to advise HMRC that: no payments have been made to employees in a tax month (no FPS is due) they will not be making payments to employees for a future period (period of inactivity) they have ceased employing staff. An EPS also tells HMRC that the employer wishes to recover: statutory payments NIC compensation on statutory payments Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) deductions suffered (limited companies only) an amount under the Regional N