HELP - Major screw up has taken place!

masterbuddy

Deleted. Thanks for your comments

mrcow

No you don't need legal advice. You just need to pay them the money back. It doesn't belong to you.

Very difficult to understand how you can temp as a PA (not a highly paid position) and not notice £5000 being paid into your account. Saying that you had no knowledge of the money is going to do little to boost any credibity your story has.

How much of the money do you have at the moment? Start with that and then work with them to repay the rest.

Tixy

1) Yes you need to pay back the money in full. Hopefully they should allow you to pay in installments rather than in a lump sum. How much of the £5k do you still have you could hand back straight away?

2) they have only paid you the net amount which is what you are paying back. When you started your new job you obviously didn't have a P45 from the accy firm so did you sign a P46 to declare that this was your only or main job? If so then you will have been correctly taxed on your new job and once the accy firm correct their records then they will reclaim the tax back they have paid over on the wages since you have left.
That said at the end of the tax year I would look at the P45 from them and the P60 from your current company and double check that the tax overall is correct for the year.

If you have serveral firms you are working for then what option did you complete on the P46s for each? you need to check what tax codes are being used by each on your payslips (assuming they are deducting tax from you and not treating you as self-employed).

3 - I'm not sure you do need legal advice in regards to the overpayment of salary, its straightforward that you owe it back.
Whether you do in relation to the leaving/resignation procedure I guess depends on whether they are trying to claim anything from you for this (eg the cost for it equipment etc) - have they actually mentioned the returning of IT equipment etc? It might be worth writing to them to ask in what way you didn't comply with their procedures.

mrcow

Ref the tax thing, you'll just have to go through it at the end of the tax year and check your earnings verses tax paid for all of your jobs. If any has been under or over paid, then sort it out separately.

Malky

Your post makes no sense. You have an account which you haven't used for some time. You only find out this morning that £5K has been paid over 3 months and now you no longer have it. Where did £5K go in a matter of hours? And how could you overpay your credit cards every month from an account you weren't using?
Anyway, the long and short of it is you will have to pay the £5K back as it's not yours.

ellesbellesxxx

I echo Malky!