Paid a lot in tax this month.....

[swadming]

My Paye was 270 quid this month as opposed to the usual 70 quid. My workmates found the same. Of course I couldn't get thru to accounts where I work or the tax office.......any ideas anyone?

[Skyline D]

It's impossible to say without knowledge of the amount you earn and the tax code you have but, if there's a number of you similar at the same place of work, then I'd hazard a guess that someone has made an error in the calculations up to last month and had the wrong tax rates or bands in the system and it's only just been noticed and is being corrected.

There's no legislative change or reason why your tax should be any different this month than last if you've earned the same and your code is unchanged. The tax office won't be able to help you, though they will be able to tell you if your cumulative tax to date is correct or not (as would I if you want to provide figures but I can understand you may not wish to on a freely viewed website).

[Buenchico]

The important thing to check is whether the total tax deducted so far in this tax year is correct. If you find that the figure is correct, you must have been paying too little tax in previous months, so there's nothing you can do about it. However, if the figure is too high it suggests that you've had too much deducted this month.

I'm assuming
(i) that your pay slip shows the total taxable pay, and total tax, deducted for the current tax year (most pay slips do) ; and
(ii) that your tax code (which should be on your pay slip) is 603L. (Nearly everyone has that code for this year. If yours is different, you need to speak to your accounts people) ; and
(iii) that you don't earn enough to pay 'higher rate' tax (i.e. not more than �40,835 p.a.)

Start with the figure for total taxable pay (for this financial year). If your pay period ended last weekend, subtract �4874.42. If your pay period ends this coming weekend, subtract �4990.48. Divide your total by 5. That figure should be the total amount of tax you've paid so far this year.

Chris

[twix123]

This problem seems to have emanated from Alistair Darling's abolition of the 10% tax rate on the first �2000 of taxable income in last year's budget. After the outcries that this affected the low earners, he then bought in emergency measures giving an extra �600 tax free allowance, which came into effect during the September pay month. This measure was only meant to be applicable to basic rate taxpayers, but in a typical b**ls up, it seemed to be applied to all taxpayers, which lead to basic rate taxpayers being �10 a month better off, but higher rate taxpayers gaining �20 per month.
The payroll software that I use also corrected this problem during the January payroll run, charging those employees that are in the higher tax bracket an extra �200 this month (month 10). When calculated manually using the HMRC tax tables, the total tax paid to date worked out correctly.