HMRC Basic PAYE Tools in a docker container

I am not affiliated to HMRC in any way. I have not developed this software. This is completely unofficial.

I am not qualified to give tax advice. You are responsible for all your financial affairs.

You are responsible for persisting your data.

TL;DR

docker run --rm -d -v /some/directory/:/home/paye_user/HMRC markgrimes/payetools-rti

Will run an ephemeral container that saves all data to /some/directory/ on your host system. If you start the container again with that command it will read the previously saved data from that directory.

About

HMRC is the UK government's tax office. They provide software for reporting PAYE (Pay As You Earn) employee income tax. All I've done is packaged it up in a docker container for easy use. HMRC provide builds for Windows, Mac and Linux so you might prefer to just install directly on your system, see their instructions for instructions.

The Basic PAYE Tools are pretty basic, make sure this is what you want before using it. There are plenty of other software packages you can use (free and paid). There is a link from the tools' homepage (above) to other options.

Using X11 in a docker container

The tools use a Qt interface over X11. To use this in a docker container you must have an X server running on your host machine.

The container has DISPLAY set to host.docker.internal:0 which should make the connection appear as though it is coming from localhost.

Mac OS X

Install XQuartz. Start it, go to Preferences->Security and make sure "Allow connections from network clients" is checked.

By default all network clients are blocked, so you need to whitelist the ones you want. Open a terminal and type xhost +localhost to allow connections from docker containers. You will have to do this every time you start XQuartz.

Linux

It's generally easier to just share the X11 socket directly into the container. When you start the container add -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix.

I've not tested this but I've been told that on Ubuntu 20.04 the application will launch but the window is empty. To fix this try setting the environment variable QT_GRAPHICSSYSTEM=native.

Windows

You need an X server, e.g. Xming. I haven't connected up to a docker container in a very long time, but I think it should be straight forward. Instructions to come when I've tested it.

Persisting your data

The container runs as the user paye_user, and saves data into the home directory of that user. This means all data go will be saved in /home/paye_user/HMRC. It is a good idea to mount this to a host directory or a docker volume so that your data will persist across containers. The software also has import and export functions which you can use.