Questions about tax and having a second job?

sweetemotion

I'm going to call HMRC tomorrow as don't have the time today but thought in the meantime maybe someone on here can clear up some of my questions.

I just took on a new job about 5 weeks back, and forgot to notify HMRC so last week my tax code changed. Which is fine, my current tax code on my main job is now 8500L which means I can earn anything up to this amount tax free (right?) my second job they've spread the rest of my allowance to, meaning I can earn £2500 tax free? Unless I get taxed at a basic 20% anyways for having a second job (not sure how this works?)

I get paid weekly on my main job which I do 4/5 days at. Last week I earned £222 and £120 approx of that went on tax - I assumed it was taking back the tax that I hadn't paid the previous 3 weeks of having my second job (emergency tax?)

This week I earned £199 and again my tax was really high at £51

Can someone shed some light on how they're calculating this?

If my yearly allowance from my main job is £8500 then I should be able to earn approx £163 a week tax free then anything on top of that would be taxed? Does the money above my allowance then get taxed at 20% or does it fall into the higher tax bracket?

Surely my tax this week should have been £16 at most? Assuming its 45% of anything above £163.

I've made an account on the HMRC website and checked how much tax I'm predicted to pay this year and it says £0 so why are they charging me so much?

Last year I didn't pay any tax because I earned just under my allowance.


Thank you for any help

Darksparkle

Whether your tax is correct or not will depend on the year to date figures.

Tax isn't looked at each pay period, it looks at the pay to date and tax deducted to date (assuming you are on a cumulative tax code, which you want to be. So no W1/M1 or X after the code).

NI is different as that is only looked at each pay period.

Are the figures you have quoted purely tax or also NI?

CLAPTON

your payslips should show
for each job separately
your taxcode, your pay to date and your tax to date

maybe post those so we can see whats going on

sweetemotion

My total pay for the year so far from my main job is £3911.34 and my total tax paid is £225.80 of which approx £170 was just in the past 2 weeks

Thank you for your help

sweetemotion

National insurance is separate, all my payments for that have been correct this year

Dazed_and_confused

sweetemotion wrote: »

My total pay for the year so far from my main job is £3911.34 and my total tax paid is £225.80 of which approx £170 was just in the past 2 weeks

Thank you for your help

i'm assuming the tax code you mentioned in your op was a typo and it's actually 850L (8500L would mean no tax would be deducted on a salary up to £85000:eek:)

The tax figure of £225.80 is correct for week 17 of the tax year (payday sometime in the week from 27 July to 2 August) when you have code 850L and taxable pay of £3911.34.

If you earn £199 again next week at this job you will pay £7.00 tax.

Basically what's happened is you've been playing catch up the last few weeks as you are actually earning just short of £12000 at your main job (3911.34 / 17 = £230/week x 52 = £11960) so when your code was split between jobs and reduced to 850L there was a fair bit of extra tax to pay. That's now sorted out and you'll be back to normal now with you paying 20% tax on anything over £163.65 a week. You'd need a pretty hefty pay rise to have to start worrying about 40% tax

sweetemotion

Thank you so much! I have literally no idea how tax works (just assumed it worked in the same way as NI) I've been trying to work out what is going on for days and could not get my head around it.