Employer made a mistake with redundancy calculation. Now HMRC want the money

Cook_County

It would have been normal as part of the discussions for an employee receiving a large payment in March to ask for some or all of it to be deferrred until the following tax year to reduce UK tax payable - or to ask for larger pension contributions instead to achieve a similar result.

It would be surprising if westerngal and her husband did not think through the tax implications when the payment was offered, this appears with hindsigght to have been an unfortunate oversight.