How do you get income tax back? 30 October 2022 at 1:49PM edited 30 October 2022 at 1:53PM in Cutting tax 10 replies 273 views

sparkiemalarkie

Hi, my son has been working for a few different employment agencies and has been taxed even though he has earned very little.
What is the easiest / quickest way to claim this back please?
He can't afford to wait until the end of the tax year.

tia

sx

sheramber

Did he get  a P45 from each employer?

Did he pass them to his new employer each time?

has he checked his personal tax account to see what information HMRC hold about his various employments?

eskbanker

If he's accumulated multiple employers in the first half of the tax year then it's probably unsurprising that PAYE tax coding won't have kept pace with the changes - the tax that he's due to pay will only really be properly calculable at the end of the tax year, so even though it may seem like he's overpaid, that should correct itself over the rest of the year if he stabilises with one employer.  The full situation can only really be ascertained with sight of codings and earnings on P45s, P60s, etc, though - does he have all those?

https://www.gov.uk/claim-tax-refund provides a calculator that he could follow?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

sparkiemalarkie said:

Hi, my son has been working for a few different employment agencies and has been taxed even though he has earned very little.
What is the easiest / quickest way to claim this back please?
He can't afford to wait until the end of the tax year.

tia

sx

Is he currently working?

Or signing on for JSA?

sparkiemalarkie

Thanks, he doesn't have any P45's as he seems to be kept 'on the books' of each agency he has joined up to'
He has earned no more than £3000 this tax year.
He is now with a 3rd Agency and has paid emergency tax with agencies 2 and 3.

I will get him to look at the link that eskbanker has kindly included and see if we can work it out.

thanks

sx

eskbanker

If (from HMRC's perspective) he currently has three employers but with variable income, it's going to be difficult for them to set meaningful tax codings without some sort of idea of what his earnings across the whole year are likely to be?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

sparkiemalarkie said:

Thanks, he doesn't have any P45's as he seems to be kept 'on the books' of each agency he has joined up to'
He has earned no more than £3000 this tax year.
He is now with a 3rd Agency and has paid emergency tax with agencies 2 and 3.

I will get him to look at the link that eskbanker has kindly included and see if we can work it out.

thanks

sx

I suspect you've got confused somewhere.

The emergency tax code (1257L) is the code most people have and means no tax is deducted unless taxable pay excess £1048/month (£242/week).

What he needs to do is calculated how much he expects to earn with each  employer throughout this tax year and arrange for HMRC to split his tax code allowances accordingly.

This will take an element of guesswork but means he will get any overpaid tax back as soon as each employer operates the revised tax codes.

For example let's say he estimated he'd earn £4,000 at agency 1, £2,500 at agency 2 and £1,000 at agency 3 the tax codes allocated would be 907L, 250T and 100T.

What can work well is to slightly overestimate how much he will earn at each job he's already paid tax so he gets the benefit of some of his allowances earlier in the year.

Tax code 250T means the first £48.25/week is paid without tax so by now, nearly 7/12ths of the way through the tax year his allowances will be about £1,450 meaning if he earned less than that with with that particular employer any tax deducted earlier in this tax year will be refunded by the employer when they first use the new tax code.

Over estimating his earnings will allow slightly more allowances part way through the tax year.

Dazed_and_C0nfused

sparkiemalarkie said:

Thanks, he doesn't have any P45's as he seems to be kept 'on the books' of each agency he has joined up to'
He has earned no more than £3000 this tax year.
He is now with a 3rd Agency and has paid emergency tax with agencies 2 and 3.

I will get him to look at the link that eskbanker has kindly included and see if we can work it out.

thanks

sx

Just to be clear, he can't claim a refund from HMRC at the moment.

sparkiemalarkie

Thanks...
On the GOV.UK website only one of the employment agencies are showing with tax code showing as  'currently unavailable'. 
The code on his pay slip for this particular agency is 0000T/1
He is expecting 1 more weeks pay from this agency

The first agency (who he worked for throughout August) and the newest agency (joined last week not received pay yet) are not showing on GOV.UK

Thanks for the help

sx

Dazed_and_C0nfused

sparkiemalarkie said:

Thanks...
On the GOV.UK website only one of the employment agencies are showing with tax code showing as  'currently unavailable'. 
The code on his pay slip for this particular agency is 0000T/1
He is expecting 1 more weeks pay from this agency

The first agency (who he worked for throughout August) and the newest agency (joined last week not received pay yet) are not showing on GOV.UK

Thanks for the help

sx

I think he needs to phone HMRC and bring things up to date.  8am is recommended as the best time to get a quick response.

Tax code 0T isn't the emergency tax code, it's used by employers when the employee hasn't engaged with the new starter process. 

Or the employee has engaged but the employer is poor at running payroll.

MalMonroe

sparkiemalarkie said:

Thanks...
On the GOV.UK website only one of the employment agencies are showing with tax code showing as  'currently unavailable'. 
The code on his pay slip for this particular agency is 0000T/1
He is expecting 1 more weeks pay from this agency

The first agency (who he worked for throughout August) and the newest agency (joined last week not received pay yet) are not showing on GOV.UK

Thanks for the help

sx

Hi - your son could also send a message to HMRC via his personal gov.uk tax account.

I've done that in the past - last time was April this year - and had quite quick responses. I've also received quite quick tax refunds that way and have not had to wait until the end of the following financial year. 

HMRC don't always get tax codes right. If your son explains his situation, they will put things right and ensure that employers are using the correct codes.