Sign on bonus Tax

Caijin

High, I have recently accepted a job offer with a sign on bonus and I am wondering what tax I will be paying on it (or rather the take home portion of it).

So the sign on bonus is £14.5k with my salary as £29k.

Can anyone tell me how the tax works on this?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

SailorSam

I thought 'golden hellos' were only paid to senior employees. To get one of 50% of your salary, you're very lucky. Do you have to pay it back if you leave ?

Caijin

It's a startup company. I will be a senior employee. Yes I will have to pay it back if i leave.

maninthestreet

Caijin wrote: »

High, I have recently accepted a job offer with a sign on bonus and I am wondering what tax I will be paying on it (or rather the take home portion of it).

So the sign on bonus is £14.5k with my salary as £29k.

Can anyone tell me how the tax works on this?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/

Darksparkle

Your take home pay that particular month will would depend on your pay and tax already in the year.

chrisbur

I would also add that any tax paid when the bonus is paid may not be the end of the story. It is possible that some of the tax could come back to you as the year progresses.
If you want a better indication you need to give actual figures.

agrinnall

As stated, to give a definitive answer you'll need to give actual figures. However, as a rough estimate you will pay 20% tax (and possibly a small amount of 40%) on the whole of the bonus amount. However, it is likely that you will overpay tax in the month that it is paid and get the overpayment returned to you in subsequent months. Where you will benefit is in payment of NI, which you'll only pay on a relatively small part of the bonus, so overall I think you'll be better off over the whole year to get it paid as a lump sum.

dcouponzzzz

From my own personal experience with smaller bonuses (2-3k) they tax that month as if you would earn 14.5k (plus your monthly salary) every month for the rest of that year. Every month following this will then have a reduction in tax to compensate for the over-taxing of the bonus.

Adding your 29k to the £174k it would be if you received that bonus every month, and using the online salary calculator with 203k p.a, I would expect month 1 to be taxed £6454.17.

This is only from my own experience, I don't know exactly how it works for everyone

steampowered

It is subject to income tax, the same as your salary.