Tax and starting part way through the year...

SandA

Hello

If you are put on 944L, with a job you have started part-way through the year, and you are obviously not going to earn £9440 from start till April.. what happens? Do you end up paying little tax because you aren't going to earn over the threshold? Or does it treat the months you haven't worked, as having worked and paying tax.. so my threshold would realistically be half of 9440 for the remainder of the year?

Hope that makes sense..

ViolaLass

When I started working in September one year, I didn't pay any tax until I had used up the pro-rata amount of my tax allowance not used so far that year. In practice it meant that I paid no tax in the first two months and not much in the third.

Rossco_Clarko

ViolaLass wrote: »

When I started working in September one year, I didn't pay any tax until I had used up the pro-rata amount of my tax allowance not used so far that year. In practice it meant that I paid no tax in the first two months and not much in the third.

I've had jobs that have done both. I was on an emergency tax code for an agency when I first started in around November and I got taxed like a ***** - so my so, much rebate was over £900 but I hadn't worked for the first part of the tax year.
In saying that, when I was a student and worked at Asda, I started in the January or so and didn't get taxed at all until April.

agrinnall

What VoilaLass said is correct - basically each month (or week) has a tax free allowance allocated to it which accumulates through the year, so if you start earning part way you pay no tax until your earnings to date have exceeded the allowance for the pay period. You will have to pay NI though, assuming your pay is more than £153 per week.

It'll make little difference if you're on emergency tax code as that is now 944L anyway, I don't know what code Rossco was on but I suspect it was BR so everything was taxed at 20%, there shouldn't be any way that would happen to you.