Old employer wrongly reported taxable income

jp51

Thanks to anyone for reading the below - would appreciate any and all suggestions about how to approach this as I feel slightly at a dead end.

I found out at the start of this year that my last employer had, for two tax years (16-17 and 17-18) seemingly wrongly reported my taxable income to HMRC, over-reporting it by ~£700 and ~£800 in each year respectively.

I'm a higher rate tax payer so this has resulted in paying too much tax to the tune of roughly ~£600. I am actually paying this right now as I left that job in early 2018 and received a notification from HMRC that I owed them tax late last year - it's coming out of my payslips until the end of the current tax year. This is how I spotted it as I went back and checked my old payslips and noticed that at the end of the tax year my taxable income was higher than my gross income (if anyone is aware of a valid reason this could happen do say, because as of yet I am not aware of one and as below I'm not getting any further with my enquiries).

Now this seems to me a slightly peculiar situation as my old employer doesn't owe me any money, but HMRC won't have anything to do with it until they confirm the correct amount. Trouble is, my old employer is a huge multinational company and are simply stonewalling me. I've been trying to get this through for about 6 months, comprising of who knows how many emails and phone calls but it's the same pattern - unresponsive to emails and whilst helpful on the phone, the specific team who apparently deals with this is not contactable by phone. Once off the phone, the same pattern with no email responses begins.

So back to the start - I have no idea what to do next. Any suggestions would be gratefully received!

greatkingrat

Are you sure you weren't receiving some sort of taxable benefit on top of your salary (eg health insurance)?

jp51

I was receiving medical insurance but I had ruled this out because:

1) The payments section of my payslip had included in it a medical insurance benefit line item. The total payments each month added up to my gross pay, and for these two years my taxable pay was always slightly more each month
2) I worked for this employer for over 4 years, and received the same medical insurance benefits every year. Only in these 2 years was my income reported like this.

greatkingrat

It's likely to do with that then. Do you get a P11D showing the insurance at the end of the year or is it just on the payslip?

If you can post figures from a monthly payslip it will be easier to see how the company is treating it and whether it is correct or not.