How should I submit end-of-year lodgements?
Before seeking out support, make sure to check out: Submitting End of Year FSS files for Electronic Lodgement through Buddy (FSSXpress™)
This will guide you on how to you can log in and submit the MTCA.
What if I want to submit through the MTCA Portal instead of Buddy?
You can download the electronic lodgement files and then submit them through the MTCA's log-in.
However, if you encounter errors, our team will not be able to access the errors that the MTCA sends, and this limits the amount of support that our team can provide.
What support does Buddy's Team provide?
As the software provider, Buddy's support team is there to assist with any technical difficulties, such as accessing the FSSXpress™ functionality, understanding how to update Tax Forms, and assistance identifying submission errors that arise from a technical difficulty.
What am I responsible for?
In brief, you are the owner of your data. You are a payroll officer for the company and are responsible for all the non-technical details.
Adhering to Deadlines
First and foremost, you are responsible for ensuring you can validate and submit submission files within the deadline.
Don't postpone submission to the last day!
Responsibility for Data
You must know what data you are submitting. Before attempting submission, you should perform reconciliation.
This can be done in various ways, such as:
- Downloading employee data report to ensure you have all required data
- Reconciling Payroll Reports with FS5s (ideally done throughout the year)
- Reconciling FS3s with FS5s
- Agree with the FS7 totals that you will be submitting
- Comparing FS3 totals with Final Payslip
We've built a Payroll Breakdown by FSS report that contains advanced payslip data, as well as a Custom Report Builder to help with these checks.
Identifying and Correcting Errors
When submitting, it is not uncommon to receive errors. These may include employee surnames that do not match the provided tax number or validation issues arising from incorrect settings. At the end of this article, you will find a list of the most common errors and what they refer to.
When you encounter these errors, you need to be able to understand them and then plan on correcting them.
Regenerating Tax Forms
If you have updated details, such as surname or ID number of an employee, you will need to Regenerating Tax Forms (FS7 and FS3s). That will generate the .pdf data again, as well as update the submission data.
Re-Opening Payroll
If you need to edit backdated payslips, you can re-open previous payroll, edit the payslips and conclude them again.
If you are planning on updating previous payslip, there are some things that you should plan:
- download offline copies of current tax forms, payslips and reports
- understand how the changes impact the employees
- communicate these changes to relevant people in your team
- plan how to pay the differences to employees
To re-open a payroll, follow this guide: Opening a Concluded Payroll (Reopen Payroll)
Editing Electronic Lodgement Files Manually
One of the other options is to download the .SS and .F3 files and edit these manually through the MTCA's e-filing sheet.
When editing files, you are taking responsibility that the submission data will not match the FS3s provided by Buddy. Therefore, you would be able to edit and produce the FS3 manually.
Requesting Assistance
Buddy provides the best tools for end-of-year submission, which means that most customers should be able to submit independently of any external support.
Notwithstanding, customers can request Extraordinary Assistance from Buddy's Team for services that are outside the scope of our team's terms of service.
On the other hand, if you believe you have encountered an anomaly, please report this to our team via email. When doing so, provide all the details you have prepared, including any details on reconciliations you performed.
The Most Common Submission Errors
The below are the most common types of issues and what they arise from:
Incorrect Company Data
Errors like invalid IT Registration Number would mean that details like the Company Tax Number are incorrect.
Update these in the settings page and then attempt submission again.
Incorrect Employee Data
The following errors usually tie in from having incorrect data, or data that does not match up with the registered data that the MTCA has:
- Incorrect Surname
- Surname and ID don't match
- Surname does not match Tax Ref No
All the above will need you to validate the data and if you update any data, regenerate Tax Forms to update the Tax Forms.
Note that the error that the ID number is invalid may refer to the Spouse ID.
Incorrect Spouse Details
You may encounter errors regarding spouse details or marriage status:
- Spouse ID expected to be empty for single employees
In such cases, check with the MTCA, as the marriage or the spouse's tax number may not be registered with the MTCA/local authorities. This may mean that the employee should be on single tax or that they require to fill in some forms.
In case you already you have marked the employee as single, you will have to set the employee back as Married/Civil Union and remove their Spouse ID.
SSC Errors
The following are two common errors relating to Social Security Contributions:
- Incorrect SSC Category
- Incorrect Number of SSC
These can arise from a couple of different scenarios:
- Incorrect Date of Birth details
- Incorrect social security status in the tax details
- Paying too many social security contributions for one employee due to having incorrect periods or duplication of employee*
- Manual social security adjustments
The ideal scenario is to find the actual cause of these issues, re-open the relevant payrolls and update the payslips and Tax Forms accordingly for accuracy.
*In the case of 53 weeks, this is observed for employees joining on 1st January due to the mid-week SSC. One weeks worked has to be removed from one of the issued payslips.
Disability Badge Holders and Home Carers
Employers are exempt from paying contributions to disability badge holders or home carers. Despite this, the Submission system does not detect these and will flag an error:
- Employer Contribution Incorrect
In such cases, contact the MTCA to direct you on how to proceed with the submission.
FS3 Errors
The FS3 submission may also have some of the following errors:
- Duplicate Employee Profiles
- Main Emoluments cannot be smaller than SSC
- SSC cannot be greater than Main Emoluments
- Overtime should be positive
- Overtime Tax should be 15% of overtime emoluments
In the first case, double-check that the ID and Tax numbers of each employee are correct and unique. The second and third errors will require revising the Tax Details and payslips. Likely, either the tax or social security rate was set incorrectly.
Errors relating to overtime
- Revise the previous earnings of the employee, with attention to overtime income and tax
- Correct previous payslips to
- recalculate tax in case of changes in previous earnings
- reduce 'negative overtime' if this exceeds actual overtime in the year
Students
Errors relating to the 2nd and 3rd point occasionally come for employees set as both Part-Time Tax and Student SSC. Please note that these two are incompatible.
The employee is either set on the incorrect Social Security Status rate, or is not qualifiable for part-time tax.
FS7 Related Errors
Lastly, you may encounter an error stating:
- FS3 Date does not match FS7
This generally means that the MTCA is not accepting electronic lodgement submissions for that particular year, especially if you are submitting backdated. Your option in this case is to contact the MTCA, who will assist with submission.