Wrong wages on HMRC

purpleparrotuk

I have been in my current employment for nearly 4 years. I have just found out from the HMRC on the gateway site that they have my old wages on the system from about 3 years ago. I had rises of about £5000 in total since then. The problem is the HMRC have still not got the correct wages I am on. It is still £2000 lower than it should be and now have to pay over £600 extra this coming year and it should be even more due to the incorrect wages. They think I got a £3k rise recently all at once  

Could it be that the HMRC have been receiving the details but they haven’t been updating them? I will of course speak with my payroll department but it looks a bit weird this has happened and now have to pay loads at once instead of a gradual increase each time I got a pay rise. I am also guessing they will need to backdate the rises too so will end up paying loads. 

molerat

What exactly do you mean by "wrong wages" ?  Your predicted annual income or the monthly actual pay figures ?

Exodi

molerat said:

What exactly do you mean by "wrong wages" ?  Your predicted annual income or the monthly actual pay figures ?

Indeed, I'm with molerat's thinking on this being estimated income.

It's very simple to update your estimated income online through your personal tax account (or gateway site as you call it).

purpleparrotuk said:
I am also guessing they will need to backdate the rises too so will end up paying loads. 

If you take a glass half full approach, you could conclude that you have been very fortunate underpaying tax and having the benefit of the money in your pocket.

Devongardener

Your employer’s payroll software will have reported your salary and tax deducted monthly under Real Time Information, so it’s not possible that it’s an HMRC error.   Have you checked your P60s against the HMRC calculations for individual years?
I agree with others that it could be predicted income for the current year, but not from 3 years back.

Grumpy_chap

Is the apparent discrepancy in estimated income having an impact that alters the OP's tax code?
If not, then the tax paid under PAYE should be correct regardless.
Has the OP reviewed the tax code notification?  
It is quite possible for an estimated income (for the purpose of tax code calculation) to be £5k less than actual salary - the most obvious factor would be salary sacrifice pension contributions.
Obviously, the OP needs to confirm that actual income is correctly recorded.