Research and analysis

Understanding Employment Intermediaries' responses to the 2015 reporting requirement

Research that helped HMRC understand how much employment intermediaries knew about the new employment intermediaries reporting requirement.

Documents

Understanding Employment Intermediaries' responses to the new reporting requirement

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Details

Employment intermediaries are companies or businesses that supply the services of workers to clients, for example, employment agencies.

In 2015 the government introduced a requirement for employment intermediaries (mainly agencies and umbrella companies) to tell HMRC about who they pay without tax deductions.

HMRC commissioned the Social Research Institute at Ipsos MORI, an independent research organisation, to research employment intermediaries’ knowledge of the Employment Intermediaries Reporting requirement.

This report covers:

  • levels of awareness and understanding of the reporting requirement and penalty regime
  • drivers and barriers to reporting behaviour, including reasons for variable patterns of filing
  • the impact of the reporting requirement on intermediaries’ business models
  • strategies HMRC can employ to increase intermediary compliance with the reporting requirement

The research consisted of 670 phone interviews with employment intermediaries between 30 January and 24 February 2017.

Updates to this page

Published 17 September 2020

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