Employer didn't pay tax at the start of my employment.

liamc914

Hi all,

I used to work for a production company from August 2017 to March 2018. During that time I believed I was paying the correct amount of tax as this was deducted from my pay slip. However, recently I received a notification from HMRC that I owed them X amount of money due to underpaying tax. As someone who went self-employed at the start of the 2018 financial year, this made me a little uneasy.

I spoke to HMRC twice and they have been very helpful. It turns out that my ex-employer didn't pay any tax on my wage/salary for the first few months whilst I was employed. Apparently, my ex-employer didn't take into account my previous employment and didn't pay tax on my behalf for the first 3 months of me being there. This has now come back and resulted in me being given a bill for a few hundred pounds due to my employers lack of consideration. When I was employed I gave all the necessary documents including P45 form, national insurance number and so forth so I don't understand why they didn't pay this.

I am confused as I have been in contact with them and they have told me that they are glad I sorted it out... Now that to me means that they won't pay this even though it is strictly their responsibility to do so on my behalf. I realise that they would say 'We paid you more money instead of the tax and now it's your responsibility to pay the bill". However, as I didn't realise I had to I did not put any money aside for this...

I wanted to ask the community for any advice and whether or not I should get in touch with them and request they pay this tax as it was their responsibility or if I should admit defeat and pay it myself.

Big thanks for all your help!

Comms69

No, sorry. it's your responsibility to pay tax.


This wasn't paid, so in essence you were overpaid on your take home.


Since you are now self employed, they cannot amend your tax code.


Sorry

liamc914

Thanks for this.

What a shame! But guess I'll need to bite the bullet here...

Thanks

p00hsticks

I'm not entirely clear as to what you are saying here.

Are you saying that for the first few months your employer deducted a certain amount of tax from your salary but did not pass that declared amount onto HMRC ?

Or do you mean that the tax code initially used by your employer was such that the deductions that they took and passed onto HMRC were insufficient ?

If the former, then I'd say it's down to the employer to sort out as they have the tax. If the latter, then it's up to you to pay.

chrisbur

Under some circumstances the unpaid tax may have to be paid by the employer. The following link will give you more details of this.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/366615/employer-errors-deduction-paye.pdf