The government agency has already recruited 300 volunteers to test drive the system before its initial launch in April and is inviting a further 1,300 to join in July next year, followed by an additional 250,000 volunteers from November 2012.

 

Stephen Banyard, HMRC’s acting director general for personal tax, said: "Expanding the pilot from the original 300 employers will help ensure the smooth implementation of RTI. It is an ambitious but achievable target as we know that RTI is on track. We have considered all the technical and practical issues and are confident that we have the capacity to increase the pilot by over 300 per cent in July next year."

 

Once the trial has been completed, all employers will need to start submitting their monthly PAYE returns to the taxman under the RTI format as of October 2013 – whether or not any problems identified during testing have been sorted out or not.