Taxable income - Other income (including interest) - should everybody be claiming this back?

zzzt

I've discovered that the https://www.tax.service.gov.uk will give you quite a lot of detail about your taxes. I can view tax summary for each year etc.

I can see that in 2018-2019 I had "Other income (including interest)" of about £200 as well as "Benefits from employment" of about £300.

For 2019-2020 "Other income" was about £100" and "Benefits from employment" was about £100.

I personally have no idea what either of these are. Could it be interest on savings? If so, can I claim it back? According to https://www.gov.uk/apply-tax-free-interest-on-savings the first £1000 of interest should be tax free. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it looks to me like income from savings is being taxed. Maybe they then give it back next year by changing my tax code, except, my tax free allowance seems to be going down every year (they say I'm underpaying tax).

Clicking around the various information on the tax service website I find it very confusing. I can't find anywhere how they actually work out the tax code (how much income you are allowed tax free).

Is interest on savings something you have to claim back because it's not automatic?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

Have you actually checked if ignoring that income would make a difference to the tax you paid in either of those tax years?

zzzt

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

Have you actually checked if ignoring that income would make a difference to the tax you paid in either of those tax years?

Sorry, how would I do that?

The "income before tax" includes this "other income", and then "less your text-free amount" it says I pay tax on X. These numbers all add up, so to me it looks like I've paid tax on this "other income (including interest)". Assuming it is interest... I don't even know what it is.

Edit: these are the pages I'm talking about (I've edited the amounts for privacy reasons but the point is it all adds up):

Dazed_and_C0nfused

How much tax did you pay that year then?

sheramber

What does the tax calculation part show?

zzzt

The numbers don't make any sense to me at all. I paid about £45 less in income tax than 20%. No explanation for how they've worked that out.

Should it be 20% of the "you pay tax on" figure? Or how do they work it out? That's not including National Insurance of course. It says I paid about 22% tax including both.

molerat

The "you pay tax on" leads to some confusion as part of that, although taxable, may be taxed at 0%

Dazed_and_C0nfused

zzzt said:

The numbers don't make any sense to me at all. I paid about £45 less in income tax than 20%. No explanation for how they've worked that out.

Should it be 20% of the "you pay tax on" figure? Or how do they work it out? That's not including National Insurance of course. It says I paid about 22% tax including both.

So chances are that the £200 was interest and it was taxed at 0%.

Leaving £22,450 to be taxed at 20%