P800 and P60 Discrepancies

Deehem

I received an underpaid tax notification a few weeks ago, daunting experience to say the least. This consisted of detailing that I owe HMRC over £1,200 in underpaid tax.

I didn't however, at the time, receive a P800. I called HMRC and had them send one out to me which I received today through the post.

This P800 detailed that my PAYE income was £27,522 for the tax year 2012-13 when my actual income (from payslips) was circa £17,200 and my P60 agrees with the £17,200 figure..

Now in the financial year of 2012-13 I had swapped jobs in November. I obtained a copy of a P11 tax deduction report from my old employer last week which matches the P60 and payslips value.

I have the accountant at my current job looking in to the issue at the moment. I did try calling HMRC this evening to discuss the discrepancy with them, however after spending 3 minutes going through their incredibly non-intuitive IVR system, I was told by a voice recording that they were too busy and to call back later, followed by a "goodbye" and then the call ended.

Now I'm not very versed in how tax works and I'm hoping I'm not misunderstanding how this is calculated, but I was wondering if anybody else had seen a higher value on a P800 than is outlined on a P60 and what HMRC did after learning of this information?

Cheers!

nomunnofun

Not sure as to how to get to the bottom of this - the discrepancy in income is £10322 and one would expect the tax due to be £2064.40.

Is there a possibility that you earned £10322 in your old job and this has been included on the P800 twice? What are the figures on the last payslip from your old job?

Deehem

£10,273 was the overall figure earned in my previous job for the previous financial year. This does sound correct, even though the figures are off slightly.

nomunnofun

So I take it that in 2012/13 you earned

a) £10273 in your old job
b) £6927 in your new job

On your P60, is there an entry for each i.e.

Pay in this employment
Pay in previous employment.

Deehem

P60 shows:

Previous Employment: 10,273.00
In This Employment: 6,976.00

Which is £17,249.00 (sorry for the slight miscalculation on the other figures).

nomunnofun

As I thought:

HMRC have take the P60 figures which includes both employments and then added the first employment figure AGAIN!

£10273 plus £6796 plus £10273 (again) is £27522.

You need to ring them (you will get through at 8 am although the more people that know this, the less likely this will be) Hopefully, as is often the case, they won't insist that you complete a self-assessment form by way of appeal when it is so obvious what has happened.

Now you may wonder how the idea of the double counting magically appeared to me!

Well I do not profess to be psychic! The truth is that I have come across at least a dozen similar cases in this tax year - one had 2011/12 AND 2012/13 earnings on the 2011/12 P800.

There seems to a small group of HMRC employees who have no clue in this area.

P.S. - I hope the accountant doesn't charge you too much - given the 30 seconds that it took me (and anyone else with similar experience) to work it out!

Deehem

Thank you so much! I had just worked this out myself and managed to get the exact same figures.

It's quite worrying, considering the amount of people who would actually ignore and pay this amount, allowing HMRC to profit from these mistakes.

Shame it wasn't a rebate of £1,200 though

nomunnofun

Deehem wrote: »

Thank you so much! I had just worked this out myself and managed to get the exact same figures.

It's quite worrying, considering the amount of people who would actually ignore and pay this amount, allowing HMRC to profit from these mistakes.

Shame it wasn't a rebate of £1,200 though

No problem - as I say, I hope that you don't get - 'you'll have to write to us to appeal' followed by 'we'll send you a self assessment form to back up your claim'. and subsequently you remain under self assessment interminably.

Deehem

Uh oh. I will tread with caution.

Thanks again!

mucktub86

I despise HMRC for exactly that reason if it's not them screwing up something that's pretty basic to calculate (like your total earnings in the tax year) it's them giving out incorrect information to people that go along the lines of "speak to your payroll department"

It may be worthwhile checking your tax code for this financial year in case they've already had a fiddle with it.

Good luck with getting it sorted out. Dealing with them, you'll need it.