Tax Code Confusion

Dolly<3

I started my job as a primary school teacher in August last year, at the time my address was the same as my sisters (who also has the same inital and surname as me - we also used to work at the same workplace).

When starting the job I sent off my new details including a change of address. For the first 6 months of working I was on base rate tax and then they moved me onto a temporary tax code which has now changed several times but always ends in T. It was only when I rang the tax office in April to see if they could put me on the correct tax code which I believe should be 747L that I found out they had been taxing me using the wrong national insurance number. ( It was almost exactly the same except one digit at the end which is why I never picked up on it!) They also had the wrong address for me.

So I wrote to them changing my national insurance number and address but have continued to be taxed using a temporary code since April.

It was only last week after a conversation with my sister who is also having difficulties with her tax that we realised they have been taxing me using her national insurance number.

I have sent a letter to the tax office with photocopies of all my payslips and have just spoke to them on the phone but they are basically saying that they cannot correct my tax code or rebate me until my local tax office reprints my p60 with the correct national insurance number.

The local tax office seems to think this is impossible as this is the national insurance number I was taxed on for the tax year 2010/2011.

Sorry of this is long, I am just unsure of where I stand or what action to take.

If anyone has any advice or experience of a similar situation any help would be appreciated.


Thanks

System

A P60 is produced by your employer not by the tax office.

You (and your sister) both need to check your P60s for the past few years (if appropriate) to make sure that your employer has the correct National Insurance Number recorded.
If either your employer, or your sister's employer have recorded your NI number incorrectly, then you need to talk to your Human Resources - Payroll dept. to get it corrected. Then write to HMRC to inform them that your employer(s) are correcting your NI number.

However, if both employers have the correct NI number for each of you, then each of you should write independant letters to HMRC explaining that your tax records have been mixed up.
You should take photocopies of the relevant P60s for the effected tax years, and enclose the original P60s with your letter to HMRC so that they can correct both of your tax records.

If it was your employer that had the wrong NI number, then you may also need to contact the pension service to get your NI records corrected too, this is important to make sure you get the full state pension entitlement and other benefit entitlements.

Dolly<3

Thank you for the advice.

I have contacted the local council and they have reprinted my p60 with the correct national insurance number. I will now send this to the tax office and hope that I get somewhere. Just the right tax code would be nice, I'll act on the rebate once everything else is settled.

I hadn't thought of contacting my pension, will make sure I do that too!

System

Contact details for the State Pension Service can be found from the directgov website : Link

John_Pierpoint

Dolly<3 wrote: »

( It was almost exactly the same except one digit at the end which is why I never picked up on it!) They also had the wrong address for me.

So I wrote to them changing my national insurance number and address but have continued to be taxed using a temporary code since April.

Does not the National Insurance "number" incorporate letters and the final one is a "check character" (ie it has a numerical relationship with the other numbers in the code - all this stuff is of course digital and expressed in binary) This should make it virtually impossible to make a one digit difference between two codes and still have the same final check character.

Right forget all that, it seems such a simple idea was too clever for the people who dream up National Insurance numbers?
http://interim.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards/e-gif/datastandards/identifiers/national_insurance_number.aspx

However in the rest of the world, on the sides of shipping containers and on the bar codes in the supermarket, we find this simple idea in use to prevent (the vast majority of) mistakes.

Here is how the rest of the world goes about it using "check digits" & "check sums".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_digit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checksum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identification_number

For example in that hot bed of modernity and modern systems we find:
The Gambia: National Identification Number (NIN) consists of 11 digits in the form DDMMYY-PG- ##CS. DD MM YY indicates date of birth, PG indicates place of issuance and nationality, ## is a serial number and also indicates sex and CS is a check sum.

Perhaps I now understand how a whole year's worth of my national Insurance payments went missing?!?.