A finance director messaged me within hours of the Budget to ask, only half joking, whether their payroll lead was now doing HMRC's debt collection. Days on from the 28th October, I think the joke is nearer the mark than it sounds, though only for some employers and only if their staff choose it.

The first reaction was all totals, as it always is. Borrowing, buffers and a banking surcharge that City AM says doubles to 6% for 15 months and raises about £1.5bn. But further down, in CenTax's live Budget reaction, sat a smaller item that I think matters more to anyone running a finance team. In my view it has had far less airtime than it deserves.

What did the Budget change about how HMRC collects tax?

HMRC gets a new power to collect smaller debts through automated monthly instalments, according to CenTax. It covers up to £5,000 for individuals and £10,000 for companies, where the taxpayer can afford to pay but has persistently failed to engage. Rollout starts with VAT and PAYE debts in about two and a half years, then moves to Self Assessment, then Corporation Tax later.

Collection appetite is hardly new, since CenTax notes HMRC already has powers to take money direct from bank accounts without a court order.

CenTax also says taxpayers who pay on account move to more regular automated payments from April in about two and a half years' time, and that part is not optional.

The part I'd underline comes next. CenTax says the earlier plan would have required Self Assessment taxpayers to make earlier payments through PAYE. The Budget changed that, so taxpayers with enough PAYE income can now choose to pay through PAYE, from April in about two and a half years' time, with details still to be confirmed.

Optional is the word doing the work, for the PAYE route at least.

Why could an optional PAYE route still land on the payroll team?

Because every employee who opts in becomes a payroll query and an admin task. Options still turn into queries. If a personal tax bill is settled through someone's code, somebody in your business has to process it, explain it, and get it right when the code changes mid-year, which is a lot to ask of a team already stretched at month end.

ICAEW did warn about this. Its news release, titled plans to reform the collection of self assessed income tax would confuse taxpayers and overburden employers, came out on the 10th August, before the Budget, and it was aimed at the earlier compulsory plan.

Employers will want to see whether the optional version eases that concern.

It may, if few people choose it. But many of the people with enough PAYE income and a Self Assessment return are senior, so the first to ask may well be your own directors, sales leaders and finance team. They know exactly what the payslip should say. And they will tell you when it doesn't.

Think of it as a risk point, not a headcount point. A payroll lead who has coped with auto-enrolment, holiday pay rules and real time reporting can cope with a new option.

What are finance leaders supposed to plan around for next year?

Higher costs and thinner growth, arriving from both ends at once. Personnel Today reports the National Living Wage rising 3.9% to £13.21 an hour from the 1st April next year. Make UK says the employer National Insurance threshold is unchanged. City AM reports the OBR cutting its growth forecast for next year from 1.6% to 1%.

None of those numbers is shocking alone. Stacked up in a budget spreadsheet, they tell a different story.

Martin Jones of UHY Hacker Young pointed out that the minimum wage has climbed 61% from £8.21 to £13.21, and said the pressure is now spreading to more experienced staff. It matches what finance directors tell me in less polite terms. Differentials above the minimum get squeezed, and every squeeze is a payroll calculation plus a conversation with somebody. Tidy spreadsheets don't survive those conversations.

City AM also reports that the OBR has raised its average inflation projection to 3.4% and expects unemployment to peak at 5.1% next year. Neither figure makes a finance budget easier to set.

A softer jobs market sounds like good news for employers hiring at the top end, but in my experience the strongest finance managers still have choices, and they pick the employer that looks organised.

Make UK says employing people is becoming more expensive and riskier, pointing to the Employment Rights Act and higher employer National Insurance. Add an optional PAYE payment route and the admin half of that sentence could grow. But nobody is asking you to panic about it, and I'm not.

Who should own PAYE tax payments if staff start opting in?

A named person with a finance manager's judgement and a payroll lead's attention to detail, not whoever happens to sit nearest the payroll software. In most mid-sized businesses ownership is split without anyone deciding it. Payroll sits with HR, tax compliance sits with an external adviser, and the financial controller picks up whatever falls between them. But few of those arrangements were ever designed.

It works until staff start asking the payroll team to settle their personal tax.

The sensible questions are short ones. Who answers an employee asking why their code has changed? Which person checks the numbers reconcile to the ledger at month end? And who tells the finance director before HMRC does?

If the answers are three different people, or nobody, you have found the gap. Plenty of businesses I speak to would fill it with a bit of training and a clearer job description. But some will need to hire a finance manager, and too often that starts with a vacancy rather than a gap in ownership, which is the wrong order round.

The profile is specific. It is someone comfortable in payroll and in tax, who can sit across from a financial controller and a head of HR without needing either to translate.

They are not abundant, and they tend to be spoken for.

What should a finance director do before the next planning round?

Write down who owns PAYE end to end, then test whether that person agrees. Put the 3.9% wage rise, the unchanged National Insurance threshold and the lower growth forecast into the same scenario, so cost and capacity get answered together. Do it before the spring, because the people you might want will not wait for your budget cycle.

Wait for the HMRC detail and you will be reading it alongside everyone else.

Decide now and you can read it with a plan. Both choices are respectable. But only one leaves room to hire well, and the better candidates move fast.

So the finance director's joke can stay a joke. Your payroll lead need not become HMRC's debt collector, as long as somebody has been told the work is theirs.

Because this shift needs someone who understands payroll and tax equally well, I'm glad to talk through what that person looks like if you get in touch via our finance recruitment page.