We have PAYE as well. It's called a with-holding tax.
Anyway, I found
the proposal.
Some relevant quotes (and I'm too lazy to futz with formatting so live with it or read the original):
PAYE requires employers1 to calculate and deduct tax and national insurance from the payments they make to their employees2. The
tax and NIC is paid over to HMRC shortly afterwards. But the employer only reports the details of the payments and deductions to HMRC once a year. This paper outlines an option, “Real Time Information”, for employers to report the payments and deductions more frequently – at the time of each payment.
4.1
The previous chapter outlined the advantages to PAYE brought by NPS which provides a comprehensive, single view of an individual’s employment income. This is a significant improvement, which addresses one of the shortfalls of the previous PAYE arrangements under which HMRC held this information on twelve separate databases.
4.2
Most PAYE arrangements remain the same, however, and in particular the data relating to amounts of tax and NIC collected during the year are still only sent by employers to HMRC once a year, after the tax year end.
4.3
HMRC has developed an option – Real Time Information – to obtain the information on deductions from employers on a real time basis. This would enable the PAYE system to cope much better with the work patterns of today which involve many more changes of jobs and rates of pay than in the past. It would also reduce the number of people needing an adjustment to their tax position at the end of the year.
4.4
The more frequent flow of information could improve the accuracy of tax credit and benefit payments and limit the extent to which claimants need to report changes of income.
4.5
Responsibility for the calculation of the amounts of tax, NIC and student loan repayments and their deduction would remain with employers.
4.6
Most employers now use computerised payroll systems which calculate deductions from an employee’s pay and the great majority of employees are now paid electronically.
4.7
With Real Time Information, employers paying electronically would send HMRC details of an employee’s pay; the deductions of tax, NIC and student loan repayments; together with information about the payee’s identity as part of making the payment to the employee. This would be for all employees, including those from whose wages the employer is not required to deduct any tax, NIC etc.
4.8
The information would be produced automatically by the computerised payroll system at the point of making the payment and would be sent to HMRC via the electronic payments system as part of the payment instructions.
And, just for emphasis:
4.5
Responsibility for the calculation of the amounts of tax, NIC and student loan repayments and their deduction would remain with employers.
Now, everyone, take a deep breath. It's not what you think. It's what already exists, just a bit souped up to account for the modern job market.
As an American, I don't have a dog in this fight and don't know much about the UK tax code anyway. I just threw this in because hysteria about "it could happen here!" was breaking out on another board I frequent and there's no reason or need for it.