Payment to HMRC: Cheque clearance times?

5fEtsd9Hs1LOR3SQftY9

1. If I post a cheque TIMED TO ARRIVE AT the Bradford office on Thursday 28 Jan, what is the earliest day it will be presented to my High Str bank for payment? I am assuming it would be Monday 1 Feb.
2. The HMRC website says interest rate on late payments from 29/09/09 is 3%, so at a rate of around 0.01% per day, I could reduce risk of a bounced cheque/unauthorised overdaft charges by delaying posting a five figure cheque, due 31 Jan, until I am sure funds from my maturing bonds due 29 Jan are transfered to my High Street bank. Are there other downsides to paying a few days late?

PlutoinCapricorn

First or second class? Envelope supplied with the statement by HMRC?

I am guessing that there will be a small mountain of post for HMRC to deal with and that they will stamp it with the date received: it is not your fault if it takes them days to open envelopes and pay in the cheques.

If you want to control these things so that the payment is made exactly when you want it to be, online payments are by far the best way to do it.

Mikeyorks

5fEtsd9Hs1LOR3SQftY9 wrote: »

1. If I post a cheque TIMED TO ARRIVE AT the Bradford office on Thursday 28 Jan, what is the earliest day it will be presented to my High Str bank for payment? I am assuming it would be Monday 1 Feb.

Arrives 28th Jan ....... opened by automated mailing equipment and processed via high speed transports on the day of receipt ..... is the most likely. Which means (they encode cheques with the MICR value and therefore short circuit Clearing by one day) your cheque should be processed via their Bank overnight between 28th / 29th ....... into Clearing by 1100hrs on the 29th and can hit your account in the early hours of the 30th.

So it depends when you expect Funds into your current account? As a Bond maturing 29th Jan can easily take over a week to get there ..... if the matured funds are via BACS.

Even timing the cheque to get there Sat morning doesn't help much more. HMRC will be working that entire weekend ..... and so will their Bank if they go via precedent (but they've recently changed Banks). So cheques processed within HMRC on Sat & Sun should be via their Bank and into Clearing Mon 1st Feb. Hitting your account early hours of the 2nd.

Mikeyorks

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

I am guessing that there will be a small mountain of post for HMRC to deal with and that they will stamp it with the date received: it is not your fault if it takes them days to open envelopes and pay in the cheques.

They use the predecessor (Opex 150) to this amazing bit of kit for most of their envelopes. Around 20k fully sorted docs / per hour / per machine ...... and they have 2 of them.

Not too many in the UK (BT / M&S etc) .... but a bemusing bit of kit to watch as it not only opens but also orientates the payslip / cheque and puts them in the right order for cheque processing (cheque followed by payslip). So the days of 'days to open' are long gone :-

http://www.opex.com/prod_payment.php?pid=40