SFA question

Fee67

Hi

I'm new to this site but have been trawling around to the answer to a question and just cannot find it so maybe someone here would be kind enough to help.

My OH marched out of his MQ at the beginning of Jan 09 (due to divorce) but DE have been taking the monthly payments every month since then. How about that for administration! :rolleyes: Anyway, we've now got in touch with them and they're going to refund it in his latest pay.

Now my questions. Is the payment for the MQ taken out of the pay before or after tax? I think after but my OH thinks before. Also, is the payment for the MQ paid a month in advance or arrers, i.e. in his pay received on 31st December would he have been paying for the MQ in December or January? I'm must trying to calculate how much we're expecting to be refunded so that I can check it.

Thank you in advance if any of you can help.

ICATQ

This happened to me as they forgot to amend JPA.

I think that you pay in arrears, for that month, ie on 30th April you pay for April.

As for the tax, it is a bit difficult to work out as it is all lumped together on the pay statement with everything else. As it is a deduction rather than a credit would you pay tax on it anyway?

Fee67

Thanks ICATQ for your response. I'm pretty sure the deduction from pay for the quarter would come out after income tax and NI have been deducted from his gross pay (I'm a PQ accountant and this is how things normally work) but because this is my first relationship with someone in the Armed Forces I wanted to double check in case things work differently. All will become clear when I get my mits on the latest pay statement and I can check it. He says there's not as much in the bank as he was expecting and thinks they'll have deducted tax from the refund, which I don't agree with because it'll have already been taxed. But at least I can now estimate how much he should be due knowing that the quarter is paid for in arrears.

Trying_to_be_good

All deductions for Accommodation charges, CILOCT etc are after tax - just as with any other employer. One way in which the Armed Forces system ISN'T weird!

Check if he's been charged for CILOCT, too - my OH lives on his own in surplus SFA and eventually persuaded them to charge him the single person's CILOCT (i.e. giving the normal 25% single person deduction, as with Council Tax). But in the last payslip they reversed that and are charging him full CILOCT again - just as leave season starts and no-one deals with the query!

My top tip is to keep on top of the payslips, and check everything on them.