Agent online self-serve (AOSS): update

HMRC have recently expanded testing of their AOSS private beta service to firms with up to 500 employer clients. More than 1,200 agents have now registered for the trial. The new service provides a monthly breakdown of employers’ PAYE liabilities and payments for each period.

As part of the trial, agents will soon be able to view payments made by employers against their PAYE liabilities and this should help to resolve issues over differences between RTI reported liabilities and how HMRC have allocated the payments made by clients against these liabilities.

Over the next few weeks other new features will be launched for testing. These will include:

1. A new ‘Agent’s tax account’ homepage that will provide:
   • access to the current PAYE beta service for:
     • cleansing the client list, with new links to HMRC online services for PAYE; and
     • viewing a client’s PAYE liabilities and payments information, with new links to HMRC online services for that client.
2. Links to HMRC online services for self-assessment, corporation tax, VAT and other services for which the agent is already enrolled.
3. Links to HMRC online services for ‘Authorise client’ and ‘Register a client for new taxes’.

If you have not already registered, and are interested in taking part in the trial, which is open until 11 December 2015, complete the questionnaire.

HMRC are using ‘agile methodology’ in developing AOSS, for which changes and enhancements in response to testing and feedback are incorporated as the trial progresses. As a result of testing over the summer, HMRC are revising their approach. The existing AOSS service is being designed for smaller-sized agents. To prepare for the move from a private beta service to a public beta one for PAYE liabilities and payments, and the future extension to self-assessment, VAT and corporation tax, trials will now focus on firms with up to 200 clients within each individual service from these tax regimes. This is to ensure the service performs well across a range of regimes.

Agents with more than 200 clients in any service who have already sought to join the private beta trial will be contacted and informed of the new criteria and where possible will be invited to test future services. These will include the development of services for larger firms to also access AOSS.

Agents who are not able to become involved in the testing can still participate by providing comments on the recently updated prototype screens by completing the short feedback form on the final screen.

Longer term, the service will provide a new process for agent authorisation. This is the replacement for 64-8 authorisation and HMRC’s long term aim is for this authorisation to be available only on a digital platform. We understand that the agent authorisation service is already at prototype stage and has been through some limited private testing. It is hoped testing will be widened soon. When it does, we would urge members to volunteer for testing because it is likely to need considerable feedback.

HMRC will continue to provide updates on the blog, HMRC working with tax agents, and through ‘Agent Update’ as the service moves to the next stage of development.

We will provide further updates through Technical Newsdesk and on our websites.