Wages to wrong bank account

lanternsfour

lr1277 said:

stressistheword said:

penners324 said:

Has the payroll department actually requested a return of funds for that payment?

They say they have but the money hasn’t been returned. Not sure where to go from here? It’s been over seven weeks now ☹️

As it has been more than a month, has a 2nd wage payment been made? If so, has this been received in the correct current account?

As per @molerat's suggestion, was a check made on the sort code account number combination the funds were sent to? If it is a real account someone has the money and so far they have not returned the money.

The following is a thought experiment and I have no idea if it would work. Never seen this suggested on MSE before and there might be good reasons for that.

Would it be worth your son contacting HMRC to say the wage was never received? In which case he should get the tax paid back? Otherwise he would be paying tax on money never received. Admittedly his fault, but if his employer has made best efforts to recover the money and the recipient has not played ball.... But the total wage and taxes paid will be shown on his P60 on the assumption that your son earned and therefore received the after tax amounts.

The next part is highly speculative, but would it be worth telling HMRC the account number and sort code the wages were sent to? In which case that recipient has income which has not been taxed. If HMRC were interested, they could find the owner of the account and send them a tax bill for the money received. Having thought further, paying tax on free money might still be worth it for the recipient.

I might contact HMRC and see what they say about getting a tax refund on monies never received.

PAYE employees have their tax deducted from their wages by, their employer and the employer pays this directly over to HMRC. It is irrelevant to HMRC if an employee is unable to advise their own correct bank details to an employer, the tax must be paid on the wages and it will not be recoverable. 

This would also come across as a quite bizarre request in my opinion given the problem is due to the employee’s own error. It would be a surefire way for a regular PAYE taxpayer who HMRC have never remotely been interested, in to put themselves on HMRC’s radar in the event that HMRC are bothered to look for people who seem to be doing things outside the norm. 

Exodi

Intoodeep said:

I do a small Payroll (50) the Bank (Barclays) always compare correct names with Accounts/ Sort Code

Likewise we have a Barclays business account and it does perform a CoP check when inputting payee details (though that's not to say every bank does).

However it is not unheard of for CoP checks to not validate - for example when a bank account is new (such as might be the case a young adult starting a new job perhaps). I can't also say it's reasonable to expect payroll to be stopped on account of a CoP discrepancy - we have an accountant post salaries and it would not be practical for them to have to come in on another occasion to separately run payroll on the off-chance that one of the employees has provided their own bank details incorrectly.

stressistheword said:

according to google keeping money that isn’t legally yours is an offence, just wished there was a way we could deal with this ourselves without having to rely on his employer 

I think that might be a tad naive, there are countless articles of people receiving random deposits and racing to spend the money as quickly as possible.

Even on this forum, it's extremely common that people are overpaid, and then ask for any and every way to wriggle out of paying it back.

Personally I don't think there's a reason to be so pessimistic about the businesses recovery efforts, but you have to be realistic that they are relatively powerless in this situation - banks can't just take money out of peoples accounts whenever they feel like it.

This could be an expensive lesson. I don't want to be captain hindsight but really entering your bank details for a job should have been double, triple, quadruple, quintuple and sextuple checked.

I'd suggest politely asking if there's been any updates, but I wouldn't be implying they are doing nothing or don't care, else he may eventually find himself without the funds and a job.

Exodi

molerat said:

lr1277 said:

stressistheword said:

penners324 said:

Has the payroll department actually requested a return of funds for that payment?

They say they have but the money hasn’t been returned. Not sure where to go from here? It’s been over seven weeks now ☹️

As it has been more than a month, has a 2nd wage payment been made? If so, has this been received in the correct current account?

As per @molerat's suggestion, was a check made on the sort code account number combination the funds were sent to? If it is a real account someone has the money and so far they have not returned the money.

The following is a thought experiment and I have no idea if it would work. Never seen this suggested on MSE before and there might be good reasons for that.

Would it be worth your son contacting HMRC to say the wage was never received? In which case he should get the tax paid back? Otherwise he would be paying tax on money never received. Admittedly his fault, but if his employer has made best efforts to recover the money and the recipient has not played ball.... But the total wage and taxes paid will be shown on his P60 on the assumption that your son earned and therefore received the after tax amounts.

The next part is highly speculative, but would it be worth telling HMRC the account number and sort code the wages were sent to? In which case that recipient has income which has not been taxed. If HMRC were interested, they could find the owner of the account and send them a tax bill for the money received. Having thought further, paying tax on free money might still be worth it for the recipient.

I might contact HMRC and see what they say about getting a tax refund on monies never received.

The employer paid wages as contractually obliged.  It was paid to the account specified by the employee. It is of no concern to HMRC that the employee did not receive the money in their own account. 

Could you imagine? If that was the case I'd ring HMRC now and request they reimburse me all the tax I've paid  as the income deposited into our joint account was spent by my wife. 

Penguin_

stressistheword said:

penners324 said:

Has the payroll department actually requested a return of funds for that payment?

They say they have but the money hasn’t been returned. Not sure where to go from here? It’s been over seven weeks now ☹️

For info, we don't re-issue payment until the original funds have been received back into our account.

lr1277

Thanks for the replies to my post. Like I said it was a thought experiment and apparently not a good one.