Underpaid tax

cptncanary

My OH was notified that her tax code was to change from December, as she had asked for some professional subscriptions to be taken into account.
However, HMRC stated that they didn't have any record of the (higher) tax code that was being used on her payslip, prior to that. HMRC are saying that her code should have gone up with the recent change, not down.
Upon looking through her old payslips, we found that this higher code was applied in May 2009. Her employer is denying any responsibility or knowledge of why this discrepancy could have occured.

The bottomline appears to be that my OH has been underpaying since May 2009.

My question to Forumites is, what should we do next? Ask her employer to sort it, or contact HMRC, explaining the story? Or, say nothing, and hope no-one notices?

John_Pierpoint

On the face of it HMRC (or possibly the employer) have screwed up.

Provided you understand that the December 2010 code is now correct, and the employer is using it on the latest pay slip, then the PAYE system should sort it out for the April 2010 thru March 2011 fiscal year.

Personally I would make sure I understood what the code should have been for the April 2009 thru March 2010 and work out how much tax has been underpaid (make sure you don't spend it yet) and simply wait until HMRC get a round tuit and reconcile the employer's return for their payroll with HMRC's records.
So many mistakes were made during the implementation of a new computer system, that relatively minor discrepancies are being written off.

As the Chinese say: If you try to rescue a drowning man you become responsible for him for the rest of your life.
Or a Jesus once said: HMRC was made to serve the people not the people to serve HMRC.
(But of course we all know what the Romans eventually did to Jesus )

cptncanary

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

On the face of it HMRC (or possibly the employer) have screwed up.

Provided you understand that the December 2010 code is now correct, and the employer is using it on the latest pay slip, then the PAYE system should sort it out for the April 2010 thru March 2011 fiscal year.

Personally I would make sure I understood what the code should have been for the April 2009 thru March 2010 and work out how much tax has been underpaid (make sure you don't spend it yet) and simply wait until HMRC get a round tuit and reconcile the employer's return for their payroll with HMRC's records.
So many mistakes were made during the implementation of a new computer system, that relatively minor discrepancies are being written off.

As the Chinese say: If you try to rescue a drowning man you become responsible for him for the rest of your life.
Or a Jesus once said: HMRC was made to serve the people not the people to serve HMRC.
(But of course we all know what the Romans eventually did to Jesus )

Thanks, I'll track back through my OH tax code notifications.