Am I better off not working too much? Please help if you know about income tax!!

jennyc85

Hi there,

I'm a full-time student and work on an ad-hoc basis which pays weekly.

I am aware that I am entitled to earn £6475 a year tax free, however I didnt realise this is worked out on a weekly basis.

As I'm now on summer holidays I've been working nearly every day to save up for the times when I'm too busy with uni to work. My job is quite well paid, and this week I opened my payslip to see that I had earnt £610, and only revceived £458 of it as the rest had been taken in tax :mad:

I found this quite annoying as i havent earnt £6475 this tax year yet as up until now I've been too busy with uni to work enough to earn that amount of money.

I have complete control over how little or much I want to work and so now I'm thinking.... Am i better off just having more days off and not paying income tax.... as surely 2 or 3 of the shifts I worked out of say 7 were completely for free anyway in theory!

I cant decide what to do with the last few weeks of my summer.... I really need to earn money but seems pointless working shifts that I am essentially not getting paid for....

Any

It does work on weekly/monthly basis IF you work all the time.

You should have given your employer P45 from your last place of work, or comple P46 stating that this is your first job in this tax year - then the tax would NOT catch up with you.

What tax code does your payslip say you are on?

Up to now (now is tax month 5) you should be able to earn £2700 before you start paying tax.. Have you earned this much so far since April 09?

And if you do pay some tax.. (for example maybe because you do earn over £2700 by now but then stop working and will not work again in this tax year) and still in total earned less then £6475 then Inland Revenue will refund the tax you paid on the end of the year.

suso

Are you sure all those deductions are for tax.

Even if you were on BR the the total tax deduction would have been £122.00

If you finish working and aren't going to work again this tax year then you can download a P50 form and send it off 4 weeks after you finish working. This will give you a in year refund of any overpaid tax.

Alternatively if you are planning to work again this tax year, At the end of April send in any P60's or P45's or Statement of earnings and the tax office will do an assessment and refund any overpaid tax.

Its seem silly to stop working just to avoid paying tax, at most the taxman is only going to take 20% of your earnings over the threshold.