If you have 2 or more p/t jobs you may have overpaid tax. You can claim back to '04

blue_monkey_2

Having just explained something to someone I wanted to start this thread. Apologies if it is in the wrong place but I thought this might be worth mentioning as some people might not be aware of this situation and it is usually parents working part time jobs around their children.

If you have 2 or more small part time jobs you might be paying too much tax. If you have had 2 part time jobs in the past this also applies so you should check.

Each person has an allowance of Tax free pay they are allowed each year - this is money you earn before tax is applied. At the moment it stands at £6,035 which means you can earn around £120 tax free a week. Before Sepetmber 08 this it was around £5450 - £110 per week.

When people start a 2nd job they usually have to declare that it is not their 'main' job and on this job they will get taxed at Base Rate which means they have no tax free allowance and you will pay tax on your total earnings.

If you earn, for example, £95 a week in job A and pay full tax in Job B it means you are paying too much tax and would be entitled to a refund at the end of the tax year which you have to apply for.

This is important for everyone who has more than one job as you may be overpaying or you may have over paid in the past.

Tax can be claimed back for 5 tax years so you can claim back to 2004, so as long as you have kept all of your P60's or wage slips - especially the one for the last payment in the month, the money can be claimed back. For current over payments this is done at the end of the tax year - which is the end of March.

More details are here:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/overpaid-thro-job.htm

I thought this might be worth mentioning for people who were not aware that this happens or that they might think it is not worth bothering about. If you earn £10 each week under your allowance in job 1 and then pay full tax in job 2 it still mounts up to overpaying tax by £100 in a year and this is your money so you are entitled to having it back and you can do this quite easily by contacting the tax office and sending your payslips in.

I hope I have explained this well enough.

mariagti

Great info, thanks blue_monkey. I have been thinking about starting a 2nd evening job and wondered how the tax worked.

Savvy_Sue

The main thing when you start a second job is to ask for a P46 and fill that in correctly. If you're not using your full tax allowance in your 'first' job then a call to the tax office may get it sorted and your tax code 'split' over the two jobs, but that's easiest done if you're paid the same each week / month in one of them!

If (let's hope not!) one job wasn't deducting ANY tax then you might have underpaid ... you don't usually have payslips for them, though!