EM1938 - Working the enquiry: general payments on account: procedures

The Strategic Accounting Framework Environment (SAFE) provides IT support for the collection and accounting of miscellaneous charges. Each Business Stream has a range of SAFE roles and these are allocated to ‘SAFE nominees’ as appropriate to deal with any miscellaneous SAFE charges.

As soon has you believe that there may be additional tax to pay, ask your SAFE nominee to set up a SAFE customer account and provide you with the unique 15 character SAFE customer reference. Do not wait until after you have requested a payment on account.

When requesting payments on account, ask the customer to quote the 15 character SAFE customer reference as a payment reference number when they pay. You should explain that this should not be used as the reference to make any other payments to HMRC. Payments made using this reference number can only be accepted by HMRC as payments on account.

When you request a payment on account, tell the customer that they can

  • make the payment using any of the methods listed in the section ‘pay taxes, penalties or enquiry settlements’ on the HMRC pages of gov.uk (tell them to go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘pay taxes, penalties or enquiry settlements’) using the 15 character SAFE customer reference, or
  • send a cheque if they are unable to pay us electronically. Tell the customer to make the cheque payable to 'HM Revenue and Customs only' with their 15 character SAFE customer reference on the back of the cheque and to send their payments to HMRC Direct, BX5 5BD

You must tell the customer that whichever method they use, receipt of payments on account do not commit HMRC to any particular course of action.  See EM1941 for unexpected payments on account.

Note: The 15 character customer reference number must not be given over the telephone or at a meeting unless you have already issued the details in writing. This is to avoid payments being accepted without a disclaimer.  See EM1941 for unexpected payments on account and issuing a disclaimer.

EM1939 explains the how to process a payment on account.