A four-hour closure of HMRC's online Government Gateway portal on 19 November for scheduled maintenance will affect employers and offshore payroll providers submitting Employer Payment Summary (EPS) returns for the tax month ending 5 November.

According to the information on the HMRC website, Government Gateway is expected to close from 21:00 on 19 November to 00:59 on 20 November. This means that employers using commercial software or HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools will not be able to send their real-time PAYE submissions during this time.

As 19 November is the monthly cut-off for sending an Employer Payment Summary (EPS) for tax month 6 October - 5 November. This means that any EPS submissions sent after 21:00 will be automatically allocated to the next tax month (6 Nov - 5 Dec). To ensure all EPS submissions are allocated to the correct month, employers should send their EPS submissions before 21:00 on Tuesday 19 November.

For users of the Excise Movement and Control System (EMCS), HMRC recommends where possible that they wait for EMCS to become available and then submit messages on EMCS in the normal way rather than use fallback procedures. If they cannot wait for EMCS to become available, they must follow the fallback procedures detailed in Public Notice 197 and on the EMCS website.

Details of affected services are available from HMRC