AIBU to expect a take home pay of roughly £920 from an annual salary of £11,745?

[AlohaMolly]

A month ago, I took a new job that paid around £700 more annually than my previous job. More money on paper and also in practice because of the difference in commute. The annual salary was £11,745. Ive just been paid £787 for my first month of work and I can’t figure out how that works? I absolutely gutted as it’s roughly £150 less a month than I was earning before. Have I been really stupid? I asked about the annual salary, not the monthly one and did some rough calculations based on the NIC I paid in my last job. I feel like such a fool, this job was supposed to better my life.

Did you hand in ur P45 when u started, otherwise you will be on basic rate. Hubby worked for an agency, company then took him on permanent. Being taxed loads, kept chasing asking why. The agency did not send him a P45, said they had sent it to the company, company said they never received anything, so it was on hubby to sort. He ended up calling HMRC, who amended the tax code there end, notifying the company, should then get a refund. So should get it all back in the end.

Should be 958 according to this www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php

It's your tax code, isn't it? You have BR there? That's 20% on anything about your allowance, and it's an emergency code for when they don't know your tax code. Ring them, look up the number on Google, "hmrc tax code phone number" and ask them to check and sort out your tax code. Do that soon and you could see the refund in next month's pa.

[quote AlohaMolly]@Mayvis yes I have, how did you guess? the email I had, with confirmation of the wage, was worded like this -

The pay for 26.25 hours a week would work out at a minimum annual salary of £11,795 which is based on working 39 weeks of the year.[/quote]
If you are paid by the day, pay could also be affected by February being a short month. Many employers smooth this out and just divide annual salary by 12, but not all.

I agree with PPs that the tax code is most likely the culprit though. Check that they have auto enrolled you in a pension too, unless you have opted out. If they haven't bothered to ask for your P45, I'd be concerned about their other processes.

If someone is employed from 1st Sept - 31st August they would receive 1/12 of the salary per month, work for 39 weeks and not work for 13 weeks. If someone starts mid year it wouldn't be fair to pay them exactly the same each month at this point because they could start on 1st March, have 2 weeks off at Easter, a week at half term and 6 weeks over the summer and then leave on say 30th September. That would equate to 7 months of employment time but of that there's 9 weeks holiday. The calculation must therefore be more complex.

It's not, people who work 39 weeks still get additional holiday pay.

For all support staff in schools it's important to know your hourly rate to be able to work anything out correctly. The email received says 'minimum' (what does that mean?) and also '39 weeks' (holidays? inset days?). Far too fudgy.

agree the minimum bit is weird. You should be given a FTE & an actual salary.

Looks like you started on 28th but paid on 25th so 3 days less pay in first month. Also if you have P45 you need to give it in go your employer as without it they have to take emergency tax. You will get that extra tax you paid back though in rebate. From April you will also be taken out of paying NIC so should gain a few pounds there. You are under tax threshold so once you give in P45 you should not pay tax either.

@freedaym

If someone is employed from 1st Sept - 31st August they would receive 1/12 of the salary per month, work for 39 weeks and not work for 13 weeks. If someone starts mid year it wouldn't be fair to pay them exactly the same each month at this point because they could start on 1st March, have 2 weeks off at Easter, a week at half term and 6 weeks over the summer and then leave on say 30th September. That would equate to 7 months of employment time but of that there's 9 weeks holiday. The calculation must therefore be more complex.

It's not, people who work 39 weeks still get additional holiday pay.

Yes they do but if someone works from 1st Oct to 28th Feb in a school they would be employed for 5 months and get Oct half term, Xmas and Feb half term off so 4 or possibly 5 weeks off but if employed as above for part of an academic year at a different time in the year then they would get 9 weeks off during 7 months employment. I would be amazed if anyone employed in an academic part time role is paid 1/12 of the annualised salary if they aren't employed for the full academic year - it just wouldn't be fair.

You should have been paid for the 28th February and for all of March.

If you have not given them a P45 or P46, you will be on Basic Rate tax. This means you are likely to have paid more tax than you should of. It will be refunded.

Also the LGPS pension scheme has high contributions (but the employer pays a lot in to)

Income of 11,500. Receive 958 a month.

@freedaym

agree the minimum bit is weird. You should be given a FTE & an actual salary.

Agree that the actual salary needs to be clearly set out, otherwise there could be confusion as to how many hours per week and weeks per year the amount received is based on.

Is the number stated what a person working 37.5 hours per week, 52 weeks per year (minus the full time holiday allowance) would receive, and this is pro-ratad down for shorter working week and fewer weeks per year or has this calculation already been done?

Although as full time NMW works out at around £18k pa, it's very likely that the £11745 is what the OP will actually be paid, and there will be minimal deductions due to being below the tax threshold.

There will be some NI to pay, but that won't apply from later this year, as they're moving the NI threshold up to be the same as for tax, which is good news for the OP and other low paid workers.

Regardless of whether OP is on an emergency tax code or not, she doesn't actually earn enough to pay any tax - so it shouldn't be that!

[quote implantreplace]@Mybestyear

The op can refer to her contract
Determine what she is entitled to
And then refer to pay slip to see if applied[/quote]
@implantreplace
If it’s anything like my (public sector) contract, all it will say is what the salary is and refer to generic rules around contributions. It’s not a straightforward thing to work out what your take home pay should be and IMO making out like it is implies the OP is somehow foolish for not being able to. I get the same top line pay every month and pay the usual bog standard contributions yet there are barely 2 months in a row that my take home pay is identical - it always varies by anything from 3pence to £1.12 (that’s the most it’s ever varied). I asked payroll just out of interest but nobody could explain why. Obviously I’m not caring about a few pence but my point is, wages are really quite complex and it’s not just a case of “determining” what you are due.

You will probably find that this job has been marked as a second job and that your tax free allowance has all been allocated to your old/first job. This happens a lot where P60s/P45s haven't been issued yet. You can log into your government gateway account to check. If this is the case you can call HMRC and tell them of your changes.

And yes pension contributions will be higher than expected

don't opt out though

@AllThatFancyPaintsAsFair

No need to be rude. As I said, I'm not sure exactly how it works for TAs starting mid-year. What I do know, however, as I work in education for a local authority, is that TAs are not salaried workers so your point it irrelevant. It is not an annual salary, it's an hourly (totally exploitative) wage with a casual contract made to look like an annual salary - she is paid for 39 weeks work and they have given an equivalent annual salary. Her paraphrased quote about the terms of employment says this quite clearly. It is also absolutely the standard employment situation for TAs. www.tes.com/jobs/careers-advice/teaching-assistant/teaching-assistant-pay-and-conditions.

Essentially, with term-time only contracts, TAs are unemployed for the holidays (but can't claim unemployment benefits, so pretty screwed).

OP will probably have a 6 month contract - her contract will be need to be renewed before September - she will work and be paid for March, two weeks of April, c.3-4 weeks in May, June and 3-4 weeks of July + 6 months of annual statutory holiday allowance (14 days). So c.20 weeks. If this is split across the 6 months, so she gets a pay packet every month instead of nothing in August (which is what happens in the USA for teachers and used to happen in U.K. too), then it's 20 weeks pay split across 6 months (20/26). The new contract from September will pay her the full amount originally quoted, split over 12 months. 39 weeks pay + 28 days statutory holiday spread over 52 weeks (43/52) which will work out slightly more. Not to mention the fact that actually the holiday entitlements are likely to be less than the full statutory amount as the contract is not for a full year (as I said, TAs are often screwed over). It's more likely that she'll get 21 days (39/52 * 28 days).

When I put this amount into a tax calculator based on an hourly wage of around 10.40 ph (calculated from her 26.25 hr week over 39 weeks and adding in paid holidays), I get just over £800, which is not far off what OP has been paid and suggests that this is quite likely to be what has happened. Or it could be tax codes. Or both.

Absolutely don't opt out!! Even though your pension contribution 'years' will be pro-rata'd as well it's still an amazing perk (well, the only perk) to have.
Someone mentioned what happens if you leave mid-year. Your final pay month will reflect that. Usually a nice bonus but occasionally adjusted down depending on hours worked.

Sorry. I checked her quote - it does say salary, but also says 'works out as', which is an odd phrase. However, the rest of what I said still stands - she is almost certainly paid based on hours worked and on a term-time contract which falls through the cracks of normal annual salary protections.

Either way, I hope it works out @AlohaMolly and I hope the job gets better. Support staff in schools are amazing, utterly underpaid and under-appreciated by the system. I hope, at least, the teachers you work with are appreciative and treat you well. You've started at a pretty rough time in education - everyone I know in schools is struggling. Much worse than in previous years, as things are supposed to be back to normal, but really aren't.

OP - I'm not expert but you might be on the wrong tax code so they are deducting some tax, which will be refundable after the end of tax year. But of course, you need the money now, so speak to the payroll department.

Am I wrong in thinking if it not pro rata then when the NI is adjusted an assuming no additional private pension contributions you shouldn’t be paying any tax at all - NI is being raised to the incom tax lower threshold which is above your annual wage. So that’s be around £980 a month

Yes they do but if someone works from 1st Oct to 28th Feb in a school they would be employed for 5 months and get Oct half term, Xmas and Feb half term off so 4 or possibly 5 weeks off but if employed as above for part of an academic year at a different time in the year then they would get 9 weeks off during 7 months employment. I would be amazed if anyone employed in an academic part time role is paid 1/12 of the annualised salary if they aren't employed for the full academic year - it just wouldn't be fair.

No.

Say the salary is 12k a yr so 1k a month. You would get paid that each month regardless of what point in the year you started (based on starting on the 1st if the month).
When people start jobs they don't generally also give their termination date so when you employ someone you don't know if they will work for 5 or 11 months so how on earth will you work out a salary on that principle. However you won't be given a start date the 1st of July or a day before the Easter holidays & you may need to be employed for a specific time length to take paid holiday.

So you would hand your notice in after Easter or the summer not before. It's also why it's good for teachers to return from maternity leave just before the summer holidays because they then get "paid" for it but have the holiday.

It normally corrects itself and you may get more in your next payslip but definitely speak to HR for advice.

Hi OP, I'm a payroll admin.

Take a look at your payslip under the deductions section, is there an amount down there for PAYE? If there is, then that's incorrect, since you earn below the taxable income threshold of £12,570.
As others have said, you have been charged PAYE because of an incorrect tax code. Happens all the time, especially since HR should have asked for a P45, but sometimes we get them too late.

The good news is next month a new tax year starts, and you will automatically go onto a new, correct tax code. You will also get the incorrectly deducted PAYE back.