How can I get my employers to stop emergency taxing me?

[DetetectiveDouche]

I started a new job at the end of September. Both pay slips since have shown that I am being emergency taxed and as far as I can work out, I think I am paying approximately double what I should be, which I really cannot afford to do!

I think this may have been caused by my employees failure to upload/process. My P 45, which I provided, in a timely fashion, although they have since done so. (Not what you would expect when working for local government 🙄).

I have spent a lot of time calling the tax office (holding for an hour at a time to get through) but in the last week the line has been down and still is.

The tax office blames my employer and says that they have to advise on what tax code they are to use. The HR department of my employers say that it’s the tax office that has to advise them.

I have asked my manager for advice. She has passed this on to her manager. However, this morning I have received a new tax letter from HMRC with another new tax code (869LX) which of course is another emergency tax code!

Please can anyone advise. Being emergency tax like this is really inconvenient, especially right before Christmas and making me wish I’d never changed jobs! I’m in a better paid job than before but paying so much tax and it’s barely noticeable 😳

Following, I'm in the same boat but can't access my payslip system yet!

It was the tax office that sorted this for me 2 years ago. Took 4 months..... was a lovely pay check when it was all sorted, and all the refunded tax arrived together!

869 is a strange number. Do they think you have 2 jobs, and are sharing the tax free allowance between them?

Push with payroll and keep going with the tax office - although given the current state of the phone lines, that might take a while. They are going to be very busy when they reopen.

I'm in a similar position. Every week a new letter from the tax office! I got a cheque for £1k sorting out overpayment for 2021/22 - that was because my employer put me on emergency tax code last year. Today i got a new tax code saying i owe £2.4k of tax! Totally baffled. Good luck sorting yours out!

Give them a P45 or a tax code?

Maybe you underpaid last year and they've adjusted this years to compensate???

Unfortunately your employer has to use the tax code that HMRC provide.

They will most likely be providing details automatically to HMRC every month by electronic data transfer, and if they phone HMRC to check the tax code they will be told what code it should be, but they won't be told how that code has been defined.

Could there have been any cross over between employers e.g getting paid by your old employer after you have started with the new one? That can cause issues sometimes. But unfortunately the only thing your employer can do here is make sure the P45 has been submitted and all details are correct

Interesting that you say that @ChristmasCakeAndStilton as when I did speak to someone in the tax office early last week, is exactly what she was seeing, that I was ‘working for two employees at once’. Which I never was. However, she corrected this while I was on the phone or so I thought?! I even rang my old employers, who confirmed that they had done everything they needed to do (via the RTI, real time info - system) the day after I had left

I submitted my P 45 onto the system on my first day at my new job and although they took their time they eventually processed it. The tax office said they don’t want to see my actual P45. Anyway, that shows my old tax code doesn’t it.. . I’m on different wages/ working circumstances now.

If they have sent in part 3 of your P45 to the tax office then your tax records should be moved over to your new employer & a code number issued showing your previous pay & tax. Have you had a gap in employment between leaving your old job & starting your new one? Did you claim any benefits?

This happened to me when I changed jobs. HMRC thought I had to jobs. My tax code was quite similar to your new one.

Keep trying HMRC as they were the only ones who could change it. Took several months to sort out though.

Good luck!

I did get the refund all in one month which was lovely

@Nat6999 I had a one day gap.. three including weekend, finished one job on Thursday, started a new job on Monday. So no claiming of anything

No one sends a physical P45 to HMRC anymore - it's all done through RTI.

In the first pay run you are included in the relevant information is sent to HMRC to advise them that you've started working for Joe Bloggs Ltd (this should include the P45 info if it's been handed to new employer in time but that depends on the pay run processing cut off), before processing the following pay run the payroll team will download through their system any coding notices from HMRC & apply them to the relevant employees - the employer has no say in the tax code & can only use the one HMRC tell them to.

If you hand in your P45 after a coding notice has been received for you then the P45 is disregarded altogether.

As your tax code is a personal tax matter your employer cannot sort this out for you & you need to do all the work to sort it if you think the tax code is wrong - best time to call HMRC is 8am.

It's a nightmare for us in payroll too because we get irate employees on at us for taking too much tax off them but there's nothing we can do about it.

Thank you @Nat6999 . I provided my P 45 immediately however, there was quite a delay in all my new starter info being processed (I didn’t get my employee number or badge to get into the car park for weeks!) So I suspect that my P 45, not being processed in a timely fashion was down to my employees unfortunately.

I did think that it was the tax office that need to sort it out, however, but they have been saying otherwise (well they were when I could still get through to them and their phone lines were working).

Google provided me with an email address for them, which is probably not the right one but I’ve emailed anyway -

[email protected]

Sorry that last message should have been in response to @JenniferWooley

Your employer should be using your previous pay & tax from your P45 if you have a cumulative code number (not a week 1 code) If in doubt ring HMRC & ask them to issue your code number to your employer.

JennyWoollie it's the same thing but just sent via paye system, it looks like the system hasn't issued the code number, sometimes there are things the computer spits out that come up to be worked manually on lists at HMRC.

I rang them twice last week when I could still get through to ask exactly that but they said they were still waiting on information for my employer. It’s so frustrating.
Thanks for the info tho. It’s given some confidence that this WILL get sorted at some stage (shame to be so out of pocket prior to Christmas 😩). I was feeling quite demoralised by the arrival of another tax letter with another emergency tax code on it.

It is HARD to be assertive when the actual HMRC are telling you they can’t fix it

Thank you @JenniferWooley .. I’ll try again in the week. Doesn’t help that it takes an hour or so to get through and probably more after the backlog caused by the phone issue.. and I have a job where I’m in and out of visits in the community. Will have to find time tho as clearly leaving it to sort itself out is not going to work