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Late commercial payments - interest and debt recovery costs you can charge businesses for late payments

• When a payment becomes late

  You can claim interest and debt recovery costs if another business is late…

• Interest on late commercial payments

  The interest you can charge if another business is late paying for goods…

• Claim debt recovery costs on late payments

  You can also charge a business a fixed sum for the cost of recovering a…

Small businesses to be backed by new, stronger measures to tackle late payments.

• Updated: 24 March 2026

Find out what to put in your Full Payment Submission (FPS) and Employer Payment Summary (EPS) if you're paying employees through PAYE.

• Updated: 2 May 2025

• Updated: 24 March 2026

Use their P45 (or starter checklist, which replaced the P46) to get information from your new employee, set them up on your payroll software, tell HMRC.

Find out when and how HMRC may penalise you if you fail to register for VAT at the right time, and your rights to appeal against the penalty.

• Updated: 6 November 2012

From 1 January 2023, HMRC will charge VAT-registered businesses late payment interest from the first day their payment is overdue until it is paid in full.

• Updated: 6 February 2026

Find out when HMRC apply a default surcharge, how it works and how to avoid a VAT surcharge.

• Updated: 6 January 2023

Find out about late payment penalties and how to appeal if you're an employer.

• Updated: 13 December 2017

A collection of research papers looking at how late payments affect businesses.

• Updated: 30 July 2025