The Employer Payment Summary (EPS): when to send one — and when you don’t need to

The Employer Payment Summary (EPS) is the second of the two regular submissions employers make under Real Time Information (RTI), HMRC's real-time payroll reporting system. Where the Full Payment Submission (FPS) reports what you paid your employees, the EPS reports things about your PAYE scheme as a whole — adjustments, claims and declarations that no individual payslip can carry. Crucially, it is optional in any month where none of those things apply. This guide covers what the EPS does, when it is due, and a simple way to decide each month whether you need one.

What is an Employer Payment Summary?

The EPS is a scheme-level submission sent from your payroll software to HMRC. It carries no employee data at all — no names, no pay figures. Instead it adjusts or explains the position created by your FPS filings. When HMRC calculates what you owe for a tax month, it starts from the tax and National Insurance reported on your FPS submissions, then applies whatever your EPS tells it: statutory payments you are reclaiming, Employment Allowance, Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) deductions you have suffered, or the fact that there was nothing to report at all.

That last point is the one that catches employers out. The FPS only exists when someone is paid. When nobody is paid, the EPS is how you break the silence — otherwise HMRC assumes a missing return rather than an empty one.

The deadline: the 19th of the following tax month

HMRC tax months run from the 6th of one month to the 5th of the next. For an EPS to be applied to a given tax month, it must reach HMRC by the 19th of the following month — in time to adjust the PAYE payment due on the 22nd (electronic) for that period.

Tax month	Period covered	EPS deadline
Month 3 (2026/27)	6 June – 5 July 2026	19 July 2026
Month 4 (2026/27)	6 July – 5 August 2026	19 August 2026

Miss the 19th and the EPS is not lost — but the adjustment rolls into the next period rather than the one you intended, which can leave you paying more PAYE this month than you expected and reclaiming it later.

The six reasons to send an EPS

1. Recovering statutory payments

When you pay Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP), Statutory Adoption Pay (SAP), Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP) or Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay (SPBP), you can recover most or — for smaller employers eligible for Small Employers' Relief — slightly more than all of it from HMRC. The recovery is claimed on the EPS: your software reports the year-to-date amounts recoverable, and HMRC sets them against your PAYE bill. Note that ordinary Statutory Sick Pay is not recoverable and does not go on the EPS.

2. Claiming the Employment Allowance

The Employment Allowance reduces the employer National Insurance bill of eligible employers. It is claimed by setting an indicator on an EPS once per tax year — not by adjusting figures yourself. Eligibility rules apply (certain companies whose only employee paid above the Class 1 threshold is a director are excluded, for example), so check the current conditions and allowance amount on GOV.UK before claiming.

3. Reporting CIS deductions suffered

If your business is a limited company that works as a subcontractor under the Construction Industry Scheme, contractors will have deducted CIS tax from your invoices. Companies reclaim these deductions through the EPS: report the year-to-date CIS deductions suffered, and HMRC sets them against your PAYE liabilities. This route is for limited companies only — sole traders and partnerships claim through Self Assessment instead. If you are also a contractor filing your own returns, see our CIS300 monthly return guide.

4. No employees paid in a tax month

If no employees were paid between the 6th and the 5th, no FPS exists for the period — so you send an EPS reporting that no payments were made. This tells HMRC the silence was real, and prevents an estimated charge landing on the scheme.

5. A period of inactivity

If you know in advance that you will not pay anyone for a while — a seasonal business over winter, a company between projects — you can send a single EPS announcing a period of inactivity of up to 12 months. That pauses HMRC's expectations for the covered months, replacing a string of monthly nil-payment EPS filings with one submission.

6. Year-end scenarios

The EPS also has year-end work to do. If your final submission of the tax year is an EPS rather than an FPS — common when the last thing you need to report is a recovery figure, or when no one was paid in month 12 — it carries the final-submission indicator that tells HMRC your reporting for the year is complete. An EPS is also used to report that a scheme has ceased, with the date of cessation.

Do I need to send an EPS this month?

Run down this list after your last pay run of the tax month:

Question	If yes
Did you pay any SMP, SPP, SAP, ShPP or SPBP this period?	Send an EPS with the recovery figures
Are you claiming Employment Allowance for the first time this year?	Send an EPS with the indicator set
Is your company a CIS subcontractor with deductions taken from its invoices?	Send an EPS with CIS deductions suffered to date
Was nobody paid at all between the 6th and the 5th?	Send a nil-payment EPS
Do you know nobody will be paid for the coming months?	Send an EPS declaring a period of inactivity
Is this your final submission of the year, or has the scheme ceased?	Send an EPS with the relevant declaration

If every answer is no — you paid your staff as normal, no statutory payments, no allowance claim to make, no CIS suffered — you do not send an EPS. The FPS you filed on payday already told HMRC everything it needs, and an empty EPS adds nothing.

When you do not need an EPS

It is worth being explicit, because employers sometimes send EPS filings out of caution. You do not need an EPS just because a month ended, just because you filed an FPS, or to confirm figures the FPS already reported. The Employment Allowance claim does not need repeating monthly once made. And statutory payment recovery only needs an EPS in months where there is something to recover — the figures are year-to-date, so a month with no statutory pay needs no update.

One caution in the other direction: recovery figures and CIS deductions suffered are cumulative for the tax year. If you sent an EPS in month 2 and pay SMP again in month 5, the month 5 EPS must show the total recovered since 6 April, not just the new amount.

How software handles the EPS

Good payroll software makes the monthly decision for you: it knows whether statutory payments were processed, whether the Employment Allowance indicator is set, whether CIS deductions have been recorded, and whether a pay period passed with no payments — and prompts the EPS only when one of those is true. Taxriva files the EPS to HMRC alongside the FPS from the same pay-run workflow, tracks the cumulative recovery figures across the year, and keeps the submission acknowledgements together. See our FPS and EPS filing software page for how the two submissions fit together in practice.

Quick reference

• The EPS is a scheme-level submission — no employee data, only adjustments and declarations.
• Deadline: the 19th of the following tax month for it to count against that period.
• Send one for: statutory payment recovery, Employment Allowance, CIS deductions suffered (companies), nil-payment months, periods of inactivity, and final or cessation declarations.
• Do not send one in a normal month — the FPS says it all.
• Recovery and CIS figures are year-to-date, not per-month.