Student tax question

sultryabyss

Hello,

I worked full time over the summer from June to September, I was under the impression I was being taxed and could claim back overpaid tax at the end of the tax year - but on a spur of the moment check of my payslips I can only see that I only paid National Insurance.

A few years ago I know that I got taxed on a bonus and the 'system' assumed I earnt that much on a monthly basis so I got taxed massively but was able to claim it back the next year - is this principle not the case anymore? I.e. Do I not start paying tax until I earn the £9440?

I hope I'm making sense!

Checking my P45 - it says I earnt £4607 but under Total Tax Paid To Date it says 0 - I'm sure this clears things up but I just want to double check?

Regshoe

sultryabyss wrote: »

Hello,

I worked full time over the summer from June to September, I was under the impression I was being taxed and could claim back overpaid tax at the end of the tax year - but on a spur of the moment check of my payslips I can only see that I only paid National Insurance.

A few years ago I know that I got taxed on a bonus and the 'system' assumed I earnt that much on a monthly basis so I got taxed massively but was able to claim it back the next year - is this principle not the case anymore? I.e. Do I not start paying tax until I earn the £9440?

I hope I'm making sense!

Checking my P45 - it says I earnt £4607 but under Total Tax Paid To Date it says 0 - I'm sure this clears things up but I just want to double check?

You're probably best off asking any tax related questions in the cutting tax board (I'm sure a guide could move this post for you if you want - though hopefully my answer should help!).

It sounds about right to me, assuming this is the only work you'd done since April 6th and your employer knows this, you would get the 'normal' tax code of 944L.

You effectively get given a portion of the taxable allowance each month, so at the end of April you could have earned £787 before paying tax, then by the end of May it would be 2 x £787 = £1574 etc. So by the end of September you had a total allowance of £4722 and so long as your earnings didn't overtake the allowance you built up you wouldn't start paying tax - you had a bit of a buffer due to not using the allowance in April and May

If you had continued working then by now you would have used up your buffer and would now have started paying tax.

You paid National Insurance as that, for most people, works differently, on a month to month basis ignoring what comes before and after (non-cumulative). Any month you earn more than £646 (or £149 per week if you are weekly paid) you would pay some NI. So even though you will be far below the NI threshold (assuming you don't work again before next 5th of April, or earn less than about £3k more) you will still have had NI deducted.