Too Much Tax Taken From Wages?

[winkyridg]

Hi, i did post about this subject last week but didn't word it correctly, my partner started a new job 6 or so weeks ago, for the first 4 weeks she didn't pay any tax, her employer then told her it's because she ticked the wrong box on a form she had to fill out,she is on minimum wage @ 7.50 an hour and works 37.5 hours a week which by my calculations is £281.25 a week, these past 2 weeks both weeks her employer has taken £140 tax out of her wages, her wage slip states that her tax code is BR, which i'm assuming is emergency tax, is this right and legal, with NI going out too it has left her with £125 to live on?

[fiction-factory]

It is certainly not illegal. The amount of tax does seem high but if I remember rightly that is because they are recouping the tax that wasn't deducted in the first 4-6 weeks because she ticked the wrong box. It should settle down soon- maybe next week.

[ummmm]

Assuming her employer uses a payroll package whatever is over paid will be reimbursed automatically by the system.

[kvalidir]

Potentially she might be paying too much a BR is an abbreviation of Basic Rate indicating that everything is taxed at the basic rate, whereas unless this is a second job etc she should have a £11,500 worth as a personal allowance before tax. At the rates you suggest she would earn around £14,430 which means that annually she would only be taxed on £2920. Is this her only job?

[ummmm]

If she didn't have a P45 she'd would have filled out a P46, that would have put her on BR tax until the employer received a tax code from HMRC.

A payroll package will rebate the over payment as soon as the tax code is entered.

[fiction-factory]

The tax is high because it is a BR code and because the unpaid tax from the first few weeks is being recouped. The latter point will sort itself out. As to the BR code she needs to work with her employer and HMRC(and maybe her last employer) to get the right code. What happended to the p45 she should have had from her previous empoyer?

[New Judge]

Her normal deductions on £281.25 per week (£14,625 pa) will be £12.02 income tax and £14.90 National Insurance. As f-f has explained, she should currently be having 20% tax (and 12% NI) deducted from all her wages. (Though I don't know where the figure of £140 comes from).