HMRC Submission:  Error 1046 Authentication Failure

Article ID: 2025205            Last Updated: 31 October 2022

 

When making a Full Payment Submission or Employer Payment Summary submission, you may encounter Error 1046, Authentication Failure.

Cause

This message is generated by the government gateway login server and relates to the authentication details (username / password / etc.) being provided by your attempted submission.

The HMRC gateway cross-checks 4 pieces of information in order to authenticate and allow a submission.

If any one of the following items does not match your government gateway record, the submission will fail with Error 1046:

• Your gateway User ID


• Your gateway Password


• Your company file's Tax Office Number


• Your company file's Tax Office Reference

Solution

• Check you have correctly entered your government gateway employer User ID and Password.  Ensure that there are no spaces before or after the characters you entered into any of these information fields.  For example [Smith ], or [ Smith].


• As a double-check, go to the government gateway employer's website and attempt to login with the same User ID and Password.  If this works, then you know that they are correct.


• In AccountEdge, go to Setup> Payroll Information and ensure that the Tax Office Number and Tax Office Reference are correct:

• The Tax Office Number is usually 3 or 4 digits.  For example 123.

• The Tax Office Reference is usually a letter and 3 numbers, or sometimes two letters and 3 or 4 numbers.  For example, A777 or AB345.




Note:  HMRC usually provides the Tax Office Number and Reference as one number separated with a slash, for example 123/A777 or 123/AB345.

 

 

 

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