So you are a hotelier who is employing some junior waiting staff to work weekends and busy times, and they are under 16 and don’t have a NI number. What do you do?
Firstly, and NI number is allocated at birth, but it is just never sent to the taxpayer until they reach 16 years of age, as no National Insurance liability arises until you reach 16.
Just as an aside, we represent a primary school child who has a National Insurance number on his payslip and receives tax coding notices and pays income tax.
Your employee could request an early issue of the NI number, but of course this actually makes no difference to their tax position.
It might come as a surprise to know that a NI number is not compulsory for RTI filing for anyone, of any age!
In the same breath, you need to know that a temporary NI Number is no longer valid, and that most payroll software will identify these and flag them as not valid. The temporary NI number was based on the employees date of birth and their sex and looked like TNddmmyyF for a woman.
So what do you need to file for RTI?
All you need for a valid RTI submission is this person’s name, birth date, gender and two lines of their address.
