How to Add PAYE for Employers to Your Government Gateway: A Guide for Kent Employers

If you employ staff — even if that is just yourself as a director on the payroll — PAYE is one of the services to have in your own Government Gateway account. For employers across Gravesend and the wider Kent area, here is how to add PAYE for Employers, the references you will need, and the activation code to plan for.

Before you start: what you’ll need

Have your PAYE registration details from HMRC to hand. You will be asked for:

• Your Employer PAYE reference — it looks like 123/AB45678. The three digits before the slash go in the first box; the rest goes in the second.
• Your Accounts Office reference — a 13-character reference (for example 123PA00012345), found on the letter HMRC sent when you registered as an employer.

Step by step

Sign in to your Business Tax Account at GOV.UK and then:

• Select “Get online access to a tax, duty or scheme”, then “Add a tax, duty or scheme now”.
• Choose “Employers or intermediaries, for example PAYE for employers or CIS”.
• Select PAYE for Employers.
• Enter your Employer PAYE reference and Accounts Office reference, then submit.

The activation code — allow time

As with Corporation Tax, PAYE access is not switched on instantly. HMRC will post you an activation PIN, usually within about 10 working days, to your registered address. When it arrives, sign back in, select PAYE for Employers, and enter the code to activate the service. The code expires, so use it as soon as it lands. Because payroll runs to tight monthly deadlines, add PAYE well ahead of when you actually need to file, not the day before.

A couple of things worth knowing

Getting the two references the right way round matters — the Employer PAYE reference and the Accounts Office reference are different numbers, and mixing them up is the most common reason the details are rejected. Once PAYE is active you can see your submissions, what you owe each month and your payment deadlines. And, as ever, having your own access does not change us running your payroll and filing your RTI submissions as your agent — it just gives you your own view.

How MCC Partners can help

We run payroll for employers of all sizes across Kent, from single-director companies to growing teams. If you cannot find your references or the details will not match, we can help you locate them and get PAYE showing correctly in your account.