How can I prevent tax being taken on a 2nd job? Combined earnings <£8105

Unicornucopia

My wife is employed part time, 5 hours a week. Her income is well below National Insurance thresholds and the Personal Allowance of £8105 for 2012/13. She is just about to start a second job which is a very short term 4 week contract at a summer school play scheme. After 4 weeks the employment will end and she will revert to just the one job again for the rest of the tax year. She will be paid after two weeks and again at the end of the four weeks. Her total annual income is likely to be just one quarter of this year's Personal Allowance.

The P46 for the new job implies that she will put on a BR (Basic Rate) tax code and will therefore be (incorrectly) taxed on all her second job income - about £80.

How can she prevent tax being deducted unecessarily on this second job? Or does she have to accept tax is deducted and reclaim subsequently. Could she reclaim immediately or will she have to wait until the end of the tax year? £80 might not sound much but it is when you are only normally earning £35 a week!

chrisbur

If she were to tick box B then the emergency tax code would be used and no tax would be deducted.

LittleVoice

chrisbur wrote: »

If she were to tick box B then the emergency tax code would be used and no tax would be deducted.

But not actually true in ticking B.

keep_calm_and_carry_on_2

I was in the same situation once. I ticked box B "second job", then on the instruction of HR in the second job, I called the tax office and asked them to split my tax code between the 2 jobs.

For example, your missus could ask for a £1000 allowance on the second job, and the other £7000-odd on the first job.

Im pretty sure you can still do this, it took minutes on the phone. You will need both companies tax references.

jem16

keep_calm_and_carry_on wrote: »

Im pretty sure you can still do this, it took minutes on the phone. You will need both companies tax references.

You can certainly still do this. The problem will be the short time scale as the first pay will more than likely be paid using a BR code before you have the necessary details to phone HMRC.