How does an incorrect name on payslips affect things?

joelambrose

Thanks for any help.

Due to my wife having a Chinese name, her company keeps putting her name wrong on the payslips: once they put her English name and then they changed it to her Chinese name, but still didn't take account of the hyphen. Her first name on the passport is in the style Mei-Ling, but they just keep using only the first initial M.

They do have her national insurance number correctly.

Does this matter? What does she need it for later?

Linton

The NI number is what identifies you on the payslip. The payslip isnt used for any formal process as far as I know. If you need to show it unofficially, perhaps to prove your income for some purpose, you can explain any seeming inconsistancies at the time. I cannot see not having the name precisely correct matters. Software often has problems with names eg surnames such as D'eath or the various forms of Mac.

Pennywise

Some software doesn't let you put a hyphen in the surname field.

joelambrose

Thanks.

But the P60 was also issued wrong in the sense that the name wasn't the one on the letter that came with the NI number.

I guess that the key is with the employer giving the correct NI and name details to HMRC? It might be the case that they didn't. Or would the HMRC thrown it back to the company and not allowed them to add that employee unless they could confirm on both name and number?

thanks again.

thriftylass

It shouldn't matter as her NI number etc is on it. I use my maiden name at work and my married name in private life. So payslip says x and bank account says y. Doesn't make a difference.

nick74

As above, it's only the NI number that matters. A classic example was an employee of ours who was undergoing a gender reassignment. All correspondence from HMRC such as coding notices etc referred to them as 'Mr Anthony - - - -' , whereas we knew them (and paid them on our payroll software) as 'Ms Angela - - - -' .
It never appeared to cause them, us, or HMRC any issues.