Tax code for 2nd Job

plh56

Hi,
Looking for a bit of tax advice please.
Back in July I was made redundant from my full time job. Since then I've been on JSA while I've been searching for a new full time job.

In September I was able to find some temporary work for a few months while I continue to search for a full time job. The hours are random, but most weeks are under 16 hours, so apparenlty is not enough to stop my JSA payments so those continued also.
As this was temporary I used an umbrella company to process the tax rather than setup my own company as didn't seem worthwhile just for a few months and short number of hours. The umbrella company sent me this email in September:
"We have today received a P6 (Tax Code Notification) from HMRC confirming your tax code as BR Week 1. This tax code will give you no personal tax allowances and all of your taxable income will be subject to 20% tax."

My understanding is this is correct as the umbrella company work is considered my second income, with JSA the first.
Last week however, I went over 16 hours as it was a busy week. I let JSA know and they have said that I will no longer be paid JSA payments for a little while as I've gone over the hours. This is fair enough, but they said I will remain on JSA and they may continue to pay my class 1 national insurance contributions even though payments have temporarily stopped.
If in a few weeks my temp job stops paying me (which looks likely as the work is drying up now) I assume the JSA payments will resume soon if I haven't found a new permanent job by then.

My concern is that I am overpaying on my national insurance payments on my temporary job as JSA is also paying those, will that be refunded later? Also I am overpaying tax on my second income as my primary income (JSA) is now zero, will this also be automatically corrected later?
Would I be better off if I call the tax office and ask them to change my temp job's tax code, or is it still correct as it is?
I'm less concerned about overpaying tax/national insurnace temporarily as long as it gets sorted out later (so I pay less to compensate when I find a new full time job), but concerned I am losing money permanently?
Any advice is appreciated, on whether I am best leaving things with mytax code as they are for now, or should change it.

Thanks!

molerat

National insurance is on a per employment per pay period basis. JSA will give you credits (not contributions as such) but you still need to pay NI on your employment income in the same way as having 2 jobs. There is a mechanism for reclaiming overpayments but that is only applicable to multiple jobs with high pay so unlikely you will be due anything back.

Your tax, as you say, will get sorted out at the end of the year (or mid year if you find a job and you get lucky !), this type of situation is always messy. If the work is regular you could contact HMRC and have some tax code allocated to the job.

plh56

Thanks Molerat,

Reassuring to know I'm not overpaying on NI, and the tax overpayments will get refundedat some point. In that case then, as the current work is irregular, I will leave things be and get the rebate in April (or sooner if I managed to find a new PAYE full time job soon and I get lucky as you say).

cheers!

dori2o

There is an alternative.

You can register for the personal tax account online, under the check your income tax estimate you can provide an estimate of your income details for the umbrella company work and the JSA. This will update your tax code for you and any spare allowances available to you will be allocated to your 2nd job.

Just to ask, did you hand in your P45 to the job centre? If so and your JSA claim has now ended, the jobcentre should refund you any tax overpaid at this time of year and issue you a new P45.

badmemory

OP if you did give the job centre your P45 then any figures on it should be reflected in the P45 they give to you to pass to a new employer & should include any employment income & tax paid from earlier in the tax year. I'm prepared to bet it won't & if not don't give it to a new employer as you could land up underpaying tax for a few months & then have a big bill to sort. Better to pay a little too much for a month than thinking all is okay whilst paying too little & having a big bill when it does get sorted.