Payroll Issue - Want some info before I speak to manager!

Giggs111

Hello there,

Hopefully someone can shed a bit of light on the situation before I speak to Payroll or my Manager as I want to make sure what I am saying is right.

Last month I got overpaid by quite a bit (almost £500) and paid a bit of extra tax and NI as a result. This month they have taken it back but in full which means I have paid the extra tax and NI last month but they haven’t adjusted the payment they took back to reflect the extra I paid as they surely should have done that as it wasn’t my fault I was overpaid.

Is this right? Are they allowed to do that or where do I stand on the matter now?

Appreciate all the help in advance.

Thanks.

Comms69

The tax will be sorted out, you'll get a rebate. The NI is somewhat frustratingly more complicated - i would just write it off.

chrisbur

The important question here is how was it deducted.  Was it taken from your gross pay or from your net pay?

Manxman_in_exile

Surely any decent payroll would automatically correct the NI and tax when recovering the overpayment?  It's not rocket science - isn't it a simple reversal?

t0rt0ise

The tax will sort itself probably next month. NI you can claim back, but I don't know how successful that is. But as someone else is implying if it was taken from gross pay you'll have paid less which will compensate.

chrisbur

Manxman_in_exile said:

Surely any decent payroll would automatically correct the NI and tax when recovering the overpayment?  It's not rocket science - isn't it a simple reversal?

It may well be but was it done correctly; the way the OP describes it suggests to me it may not have been.   If payroll just reduced the OP's net pay by £500 they get their £500 correction but leave the OP with all the wrong figures and out of pocket.  A correction of £500 to the gross, while not exactly the correct method would in most cases result in the same answer.  Hopefully the OP will be back with more details.  

Manxman_in_exile

Gosh.  We're starting the third decade of the 20th C and we still have payrolls that can't automatically make the correct tax and NI adjustments when someone is overpaid by £500?  I could understand this when I started working in the 1970s and about 90% of people were paid by manual paper systems like Kalamazoo..., but even then it was simple enough if the instructions were followed!

I suspect it's more likely the OP is simply looking at their payslip wrong.  (eg the overpayment may show as a recovery of the gross salary overpaid rather than net, but the correcting adjustments to NI and tax are not itemised separately and are not obvious).

chrisbur

Manxman_in_exile said:

Gosh.  We're starting the third decade of the 20th C and we still have payrolls that can't automatically make the correct tax and NI adjustments when someone is overpaid by £500?  I could understand this when I started working in the 1970s and about 90% of people were paid by manual paper systems like Kalamazoo..., but even then it was simple enough if the instructions were followed!

I suspect it's more likely the OP is simply looking at their payslip wrong.  (eg the overpayment may show as a recovery of the gross salary overpaid rather than net, but the correcting adjustments to NI and tax are not itemised separately and are not obvious).

We are actually in the 21st century, and I do not doubt that all payroll programs can make the required adjustment but only if the payroll staff know what to do.  Until the OP comes back with more details we will not know.  

Manxman_in_exile

My only excuse is that my favourite song is that well known 1969 hit by Jethro Tull!