Income tax and benefits question

stumbelina_2

Hello, I hope someone here can help me. I have just been playing with this calculator http://www.listentotaxman.com and it came up with some interesting numbers for 05/06.

My situation is that I work on an as-needed basis which can be weekly hours of anything between 8 and 70 hours. I have had to sign on when there is no work for more than a week or 2. During 05/06 I am guessing this came to about 16 weeks of jobseekers allowance and housing benefit (which is about £53 a week).

My question is: When calculating income tax, how do these benefits (and I suppose council tax benefit as well) factor in?

Some numbers for 05/06:
Income from job - £8993.15 on PAYE tax code 489L
Income tax paid - £1534.41 - calculator says it should be £651.89
NI paid - 694.31 - calculator says it should be £451.57

Now, if anybody has ever signed on and off and on and off and on and off they will know what a guddle the paperwork for individual slowly processed claims becomes. I have never had a bit of paper with a yearly total. A quick guess for 05/06 comes up with about:
£830 - JSA
£850 - Housing Benefit
£200 - Council tax benefit
=£1880

Which actually still makes it look like I have overpaid the tax if I just add that total on to my wages. I may have just answered my own questions!

So - How do these benefits factor in? Can the jobcentre give me totals paid to me over the last few years or is the onus on me to find and add up all the payments? Can I claim tax back from years other than the most recent? Will raising this make them investigate other years? I have had far too many short term jobs, been a student and oh, it is very confusing. This year it looks like I have overpaid on my job by about £100 (not £1000!) but I have not tried to calculate recent benefits yet... But the big questions is - Will I ever actually phone the tax office because I have chickened out of it for the last decade.

jfdi

OK.......

Get the JSA figures for the Tax Years you want by WRITING to the JCP (if you're there anyway ask - but we always had to have it in writing!).

When the processing team get round to it (see all the other moaning threads about this!) you should get Taxable JSA figures for the years you've requested.

Then go talk to the Tax Office.

If you've been very good, you'll've saved all the termination letters every time you've signed off JSA, so you can just add all those figures up (if the WARS were done!) (Sorry - technical jargon!) and won't need to write to JCP.

Sounds like you have overpaid Income tax.

AFAIK NI cannot be overpaid in the circumstances you gave coz it is a deduction from a wage for a specific period.

Also AFAIK CTB and HB are not counted as taxable incomes.

Does that make sense?

A
xx

stumbelina_2

Ah yes. Thanks. Starting to make more sense. I think I should have all the JSA termination letters and the Pxx whatever certificates that get sent. And all in one place! Just need to sit and match them up to the gaps in my payslips to check.

Removing the CTB and HB from my sums actually makes my possible rebate look bigger so I am not upset about that. Now the last thing to fret about is other years incase I have underpaid and the few hundred pounds worth of work from other sources which I have no paperwork for and have no idea of how, um, offical it was.