muddled tax situation

mhoc

Not sure wether I am in the right place - not been on this forum before but please move me if I am lost.

I am a bit worried about my daughters tax situation.

Last year she was working sporadically in a resturant but then she also starting working in another bar. There was a bit of a change over period when she was working maybe one shift a week in job number one and a few shifts at the other.

Neither of these jobs lasted more than a few months. Job number one paid into her bank account and number two was cash weekly but they did get wage slips. She then started working in a hotel and lasted a week.

So then she was out of work from July until October when she again was working in a pub maybe two or three shifts a week. Now she has just started in a call centre a few weeks ago and she has got her first monthly wages slip and they have put a BR code on her tax which is the second job code so she has had £70 odd taken out for tax.

I think probally she has gone over her tax threshold between the five jobs she has had this tax year but its not easy to tell as she had this big four month gap in the middle. How centralised are the inland revenue will they just be able to tell from her national Insurance number how much her total income has been for the entire year?

I am a bit worried about her getting a nasty demand letter from them. Her living arrangements are a bit vague as well and I know she never opens her post.

She has not lived at home for a while and is now a student living a long way from home so I dont know wether she gets wage slips from this current pub job but she gets paid weekly, cash in hand.

I suppose if I manage to find the three P45s from the jobs prior to the summer at least I can work out how much she earned over the first half of the tax year and then make a rough guess as to the Ocotber to March bit. It will help but I have a horrible feeling there are only two P45

Has anyone else been a student in this situation, a whole string of various part time jobs with some overlapping and then long months of no work at all? How long was it before the tax office started sending letters or demands?

m

Bean_Counter

Hi,

I am presuming that the call centre is her only job at the moment.

If daughter had started new job without a P45 from one of her older jobs, then new employer should have asked her to fill in a P46 form. Based on what she put on the P46, would dictate whether employer put her on a BR tax code or an emergency tax code.

Best bet is either to get daughter to ask employer why she is on BR tax code, or speak to local tax office. However it is unlikely that the tax office will speak to you, so it will need to be daughter who calls. She will need her national insurance number to hand as a reference. If she is unsure about this, write out a few questions for her.

I'm not sure, but they should be able to compare her cumulative pay for the tax year to her cumulative tax paid and see what the position is.

At the end of the day, if the worst comes to the worst and she has overpaid tax, based on the amounts likely to be involved, HMRC should recover this through her tax code next year to mimise the pain.

exil

Good news is that if tax is less than 5000 for the year there will be no tax to pay (and even a rebate for the tax she has paid)

hopon

The IR should be able to trace everything from her NI no. as long as everything has been submitted by the various employers, unfortunately they may not have sent in the P45 part ones to the IR and so nothing will show up until the end of year returns get submitted and processed. These have to be in by the 19th May but if this year is anything to go by then processing them could take months.

I'd write in to them with your concerns and the details that you have - P45's, other employers names and addresses etc and ask them to look in to it but don't hold your breath for a quick response