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HMRC Right to Work Checks: What HMRC Doesn't Do

By Brian CrockerLast reviewed: 29 October 2026

HMRC does not carry out right to work checks, does not hold a service that verifies them, and cannot confirm whether one of your workers has permission to work. The right to work scheme belongs to the Home Office. If you have been waiting for HMRC to flag a problem, or assuming that a worker on your payroll has been checked by someone in government, nothing in the system works that way.

HMRC is not irrelevant, though — it is named in the guidance as part of how illegal working gets detected. That is a very different thing from HMRC checking on your behalf, and the gap between the two is where a lot of avoidable exposure sits.

This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on your specific situation, consult a qualified immigration solicitor.

Quotations from the employer's guide and the Code of practice in this article are taken from the texts for the scheme in force since 1 October 2026. The Code is the revised version laid before Parliament in draft on 30 June 2026, which SI 2026/700 brought into force on 1 October 2026; GOV.UK dropped "draft" from its title that day. The guide is the final version the Home Office published on GOV.UK on 1 October 2026, in place of its 11 September 2026 draft: it states that it "came into force on 1 October 2026". We last checked both on 5 October 2026. If a later version differs from the text quoted here, the later version governs — check the live employer's guide and the Codes collection before you rely on a detail.

Who actually owns the scheme

The employer's guide to right to work checks names the law it rests on:

"The legislation underpinning the Right to Work Scheme ("the Scheme") applies across the whole of the UK and is set out in sections 15 to 25 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 ("IANA 2006"), section 24B of the Immigration Act 1971, and Schedule 6 of the Immigration Act 2016 ("2016 Act")."

All immigration legislation, all administered by the Home Office. The civil penalty is issued by the Home Office. The Employer Checking Service, the online share-code service and the Positive Verification Notice all sit with the Home Office. There is no HMRC equivalent of any of them.

What HMRC does do

One sentence in the guide explains why HMRC comes up at all:

"A 'whole government approach' is adopted to address illegal working. Co-ordination across government agencies such as with HMRC and the Fair Work Agency is undertaken through the sharing of intelligence and joint enforcement operations to ensure that illegal working is detected effectively."

Read that carefully, because it points the opposite way from how employers usually hear it. HMRC's involvement is detection, through intelligence sharing and joint enforcement — not verification on your behalf. Your payroll data is a route by which a problem can be found. It is not a route by which a problem gets prevented, and it does nothing for your statutory excuse.

The practical consequence: "HMRC accepted the payroll submission" is not evidence of anything for right to work purposes. Nor is a live PAYE record, a tax code, or a P45 from a previous employer.

The National Insurance number question

This is where most of the confusion actually lives, and the guidance is more nuanced than either the "it proves nothing" or "it proves they can work" answer.

A National Insurance number on its own is not on the list. Scan List A and List B in the guide's Annex A and no entry is a NINo by itself. That is the whole answer to "they've got a National Insurance number, so they must be fine."

But a NINo document is part of four List A combinations. In each case it is the pairing that establishes the excuse, never the number alone. List A includes a long or short birth or adoption certificate issued in the UK "together with an official document giving the individual's permanent National Insurance number and their name issued by a government agency or a previous employer."

The same "together with" construction appears at List A items 5, 7 and 8 — an Immigration Status Document endorsed for indefinite stay, "a birth or adoption certificate issued in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or Ireland", and "a certificate of registration or naturalisation as a British citizen". Item 7 is the route that covers an Irish citizen relying on a birth certificate rather than a passport.

Note what the NINo document is doing in each pairing. It is not proving immigration status; the certificate or status document does that. The NINo document links a name to a person and is "issued by a government agency or a previous employer" — which is why an employer's own payroll printout can serve, and why the number by itself cannot.

Our right to work documents list sets out both lists in full, with the follow-up each one carries.

And NINos are not HMRC's to issue in this context either. Where a NINo comes automatically with an immigration application, the guide is specific about which department is not involved:

"Some individuals are automatically issued a National Insurance Number (NINo) as part of their immigration application. This currently applies to most migrants and dependants who have been granted permission in any skilled worker category or as a refugee, including those granted settled status through a protection route. In such cases, the NINo will appear on their eVisa profile. In these cases, there is no need for the individual or the employer to make a separate application to the Department for Work and Pensions to obtain one."

The department named is the DWP. HMRC does not appear in the NINo route any more than it appears in the checking route.

So what does prove right to work

Three prescribed routes, all Home Office, and the choice depends on the person rather than your preference.

Route Who it works for What you end up with
Manual document check Anyone presenting an acceptable List A or List B document Continuous excuse (List A) or time-limited (List B)
Home Office online check via share code Anyone with an eVisa or digital status — which is now most visa holders Excuse per the check result
Digital check by a registered RtW DVSP Holders of British or Irish passports (or Irish passport cards), including up to 6 months past expiry — and other List A and List B documents, where the issuing authority makes them available digitally Continuous or time-limited, according to which document was verified

On that third route, the guide is specific about what a provider may do. A registered provider "is able to carry out digital right to work checks on holders of valid British or Irish passports (or Irish passport cards)", up to six months past expiry, and can "verify acceptable documents from List A and List B of Annex A when and where they are available from the issuing authority in a digital format, and provide facial recognition technology…". Two practical consequences. The route is no longer British-and-Irish-passports-only, so a provider offering more than that is not overreaching. And coverage still varies — "Services available by RtW DVSPs will vary across the registered providers" — so ask yours which of your workers it can actually verify rather than assuming the full permission.

For the manual route, the guide requires all three of its steps before employment begins — and the same three govern follow-ups: "There are three steps to conducting a manual document-based right to work check (including for follow-up checks). Employers need to complete all steps before employment commences in order to establish a statutory excuse."

Our guides to the share code check and the digital right to work check cover the other two.

Why the misconception costs money

The civil penalty regime turns on whether you did a prescribed check, not on whether the worker turned out to have permission. An employer who reasoned "they're on PAYE, HMRC has their details, this is fine" has performed no prescribed check and holds no statutory excuse — and the penalty applies even where the person's right to work was perfectly genuine, because the excuse is about your process.

The guidance also makes plain that assuming, rather than checking, cuts both ways: employers should not "make assumptions about an individual's right to work in the UK or their immigration status on the basis of their race, nationality, ethnic or national origins, accent, surname or length of time they have been resident in the UK." Assumption is the problem in both directions. How a civil penalty is calculated sets out what a missed check actually costs, and the penalty risk calculator estimates it against your headcount.

Since 1 October 2026, more people are in scope

If you have been relying on payroll as a proxy for "who needs checking", that proxy has got worse. Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 extends "employing" to engagement under a worker's contract, engagement of an individual sub-contractor, and online matching services. Many of those people were never on your payroll in the first place, so no HMRC record would have covered them even in the version of the world where an HMRC record meant something.

The extension is not backdated. Both the guidance and the Code state that for a worker's contract, an individual sub-contractor or an online matching service, "a civil penalty may only be imposed where the employment commenced on or after 1 October 2026" — so it is the engagements you start from that date that need building into your process, not a retrospective sweep of everyone who has ever invoiced you. See what changes on 1 October 2026.

The bottom line

HMRC does not run right to work checks; the Home Office does, under sections 15 to 25 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, section 24B of the Immigration Act 1971 and Schedule 6 of the Immigration Act 2016. HMRC's named role is detection — intelligence sharing and joint enforcement operations — which helps find illegal working, not prevent it, and does nothing for your statutory excuse. A National Insurance number on its own appears nowhere on List A or List B; a NINo document is only ever half of a pairing with a birth, adoption, registration or naturalisation certificate, or an endorsed Immigration Status Document. Payroll is not a check. The check is a check.

Sources

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