External examining and tax rates on payment

[Rameneater]

Those of you who are external examiners: how are you taxed on the payments? I'm getting basic rate tax taken off and not sure that's right or what to do. I've searched but procedure seems to vary a lot from one university to another and there's nothing about tax in the handbook for mine. As it's summer and any enquiries may take a while, I thought I would ask here. TIA.

Mine are taxed at basic rate. It'll get sorted at the end of the tax year if you've paid too much tax overall.

you probably need to fill in a tax return

I’ve no idea, but wanted to ask about your job! Is it zero hours or not? I’m fully retiring from teaching this year and am looking to do exam invigilating!

If you're asking about secondary school exam invigilating you're probably in the wrong place. You'd be better to ask on the equivalent for secondary teachers.
If it is uni exams you're looking to do, send an on spec application to your local university exams office or their HR department.

How much are you likely to earn this year? And how many jobs do you have?

Basically, you need to log into your HMRC account, and see where your tax free allowance is assigned to. You may well be able to sort it from there. Otherwise, you'll need to set aside some time to ring them, and see where the discrepancy between what you think and they think is.

I declare external examining as income on my tax return and it gets taxed somehow. But it does have to be declared

Can’t it be included in the £1000 allowance we get from HMRC for trading and casual activities (assuming it’s less than 1k - I realise it may be higher for some people)?

www.gov.uk/check-additional-income-tax

@FloppySarnie there was something on the last external role paperwork which basically said that we have to notify HMRC. This was a one-off PhD examiner role, all the programme externaling I've been put on payroll for the 4 years term and it's been taxed at source. I don't think it would be classed as casual work like the examples given.

I'm on payroll at both of my appointments and the pay is taxed at source. I also do some casual work for a publisher - reviewing book proposals and the like - and treat that as the casual work falling into my annual trading allowance. The difference is that I have contracts for my EE appointments and not for my casual work.

Popping back to see if you resolved this @Rameneater? I am currently in discussion with another uni who are telling me that EEs aren't classed as employees and therefore fees are paid gross. As we all know, the EE work doesn't pay well enough to be worth the fee (hence we do it for the love of the work!), but adding dealing with HMRC, self-assessment, and an annual return certainly makes it not worth my time and energy unfortunately.

No need to complete tax return, if you have underpaid tax HMRC will sort this out at the end of the tax year

All EE work I have is paid with basic rate tax deducted.
I do not complete tax return.

It maybe they won’t if they don’t know about it if you are paid a fee/honorarium not as an employee. Rates varied considerably between pre and post -1992 institutions when I was in the game so slightly more of a payment in some places than others. £15 to examine a PhD (admittedly just over 10 years ago) was more honararium in my home institution!