RE HMRC TAX,taxed then not taxed

IANKH

In 2006 i took on a second job with Tesco and gave all detail of main job and tax was set and wage slips checked for around 12 months.Having set all bill's on either DD or S'order i carried on working from 8am till 11pm for buttons until one could no longer do it(or see the point)and left second post.Twelve months or so later i receive a letter from HMRC telling me i owe £1700+ in tax and they didn't know i had second job (on the third letter in reply to mine), yet i still have the original P60 showing tax taken.What should i do next as i cant afford over a £100 a month from my meagre wage?

System

If you check your P60s and your P45 from when you left the 2nd job you should see the gross taxable pay for each tax year and the tax paid and the tax code that was being applied for each job.

Then if you have the amounts that HMRC say you owe for each tax year, they should say why this tax is owed.

If you wish to post the above values on here, people will be able to check if HMRC have got their calcs correct or not.

System

Firstly check the tax calculation gross pay figure with the gorss amount on your P60 and P45 and see if the figure is correct. If it's not then call HMRC and they will correct it.

If the figure is correct then you owe the tax and can ask for it to be recovered over up to 3 years.

When you started with Tesco they should have given you a P46 - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/p46.pdf
to complete on which you should have ticked box C. That would have told Tesco that you had another source of income and they should have operated a BR tax code. They were then supposed to send that to HMRC to let them know you were a new employee.

If neither Tesco or you let HMRC know you had taken on a second job and Tesco had operated a code different from BR then the first HMRC would have known about it would have been when they received either your Tesco P45 or P60 and by then it would have been too late to correct your tax code.