Please can anyone help with the child benefit tax return

[Liesmorelies]

I have never had to do this before and am so confused as well as deeply frustrated having been on hold to HMRC for god knows how long.

I can't work out whether or not my adjusted net income is above 60K or not. On my main p60 (I'm a teacher) the figure at the bottom is £59 661 and it says next to it tax deducted is £12 070. Now I obviously pay into the teachers' pension scheme as well but from what I can understand that is already accounted for, so at that point I'm just under the £60k. Or is that wrong? I assume the £12k has been deducted and I'm not supposed to deduct it from the £59k? My advertised salary is £68k.

And then I do exam marking. That seems more complicated as my p60 for that says my pay was £3900 with around £800 deducted for tax. But when I add up the net pay on all my payslips - there are only around 6- it comes to £2kish. So where is the missing £1k? I downloaded 2 of the payslips and I don't pay national insurance for that job and the pension contributions are around £20 per pay so nowhere near that amount. If I add the £3900 to the figure above it puts me well over the £60k, whereas the actual amount I received is a lot less and I can't see where the missing money is.

I feel like I'm massively misunderstanding something here and it's going to end up costing me. And before anyone says it, yes as a (senior) teacher you would think I would know this but I've never had any jobs other than paye ones and never given a thought to tax. And no, I don't teach maths.

You can sign up to just it via PAYE now, although I’m not sure if that would work with the exam marking too. But worth a look!

If your salary is £68k I’d assume the £59k is the one you’d use, as that is post pension .

I think you’re getting confused with the adjusted net income calculation, which is essentially total gross income less pension contributions so unfortunately it’s possible the exam marking has pushed you over the threshold at which the child benefit starts to taper out. Your actual net pay after tax is irrelevant to this calculation.

more info here: https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/benefits/benefits-if-you-have-children/changes-to-child-benefit-from-2013

calculator here: https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit-tax-calculator

Thank you - that makes sense then re my main job.

The thing is, looking in more detail at my exam marking, none of it adds up.

Last year the amount they stated on my P60 was actually less than the sum total of all my payslips (net pay) - that can't be right, can it? And then this year, it's nearly twice as high as the pay I actually got, which is bonkers. Am I missing something here?

Thanks @Fullofthejoysofspring , I always thought/knew I would have to pay this year, it's just that none of the figures are making sense for my second job. Obviously the amount I end up paying back will depend on these figures so I don't want to put in dodgy ones and end up paying more than I need to.

Whats the tax code on the exam marking? Sometimes a second job has an emergency tax code then you can claim tax back.

Are you doing a self assessment tax form online? If so you really just fill in the figures they ask for, gross pay for all employments and income tax paid, interest on non-ISA savings etc, etc and they work it all out for you, you get a tax calculation you can print out at the end and see if you agree, if it doesn't seem right ring up and ask. Understanding it all is optional!

HMRC have been down today due to the AWS problems so I would try them again tomorrow.

That would be a problem to take up with your employer, HMRC will be expecting the figures on your P60, they will have access to those figures and it may be a problem if you declare different figures. You can add notes to the end of the form to try to explain any discrepancies so they are aware what you have done.

Edit: If your tax code was incorrect that will get sorted out in the calculation, you just declare your gross income and how much tax you actually paid, whether that was right or wrong. They just do a sum of all your gross income all your tax paid, subtract allowances, and calculate the tax you should have paid in each tax band to get to your true position.

Thanks @BadgernTheGarden - just been told that by HMRC so now on hold to the exam board! I'm not submitting anything until I've sorted it as it's not the deadline yet.

The P60 from your second job should equal the aggregate of all your payslips from the second job. Do you have all those payslips? Is it possible that they paid some amounts in April/ May this tax year that you thought were in the last tax year?