I think I just worked out my last employer underpaid me for an entire year- what can I do ?

[giddyg]

I thought it was a tax issue, but when I put my gross salary in the HMRC online tax calculator and compared it to what I was actually paid- I was underpaid by a substantial amount in the ' gross ' section of my pay on my pay slips as reported to HMRC by the company.

What can I do about this ?

I don’t know how to explain this but it could be the payroll system. I use xero payroll and if an employee is paid an hourly rate I calculate the annual salary myself and put this in, because xero seems to work on the basis that there are 52 weeks in a year, when there is actually 52.1429 (rounded). So e.g if I’ve calculated someone’s annual salary if they are on £13ph, xero works backwards and tells me their hourly rate is a bit more than this. If I told xero they are paid £13ph it would calculate a slightly lower gross annual salary than I calculate.

Could this explain the difference between your gross and that on the payslips?

If your gross is correct and net is wrong, is it that tax was wrong applied ? Maybe incorrect tax code? This can be sorted with HMRC rather than previous employer.

@ForOpenLeader excuse me ? No he hasn't.

He hasn't explained anything. I'm chasing.

I agree my gross per hmrc would be £45k

But my payslips still show both the gross gross of £50k then the pension of £5k to get to the taxable gross of £45k. Normal to do that to say show mortgage company your true salary.

Op -uou need to look at a payslip. That should show you what's happened. £200 ish is around the normal amount for auto enrollment pension for anyone over £50k salary.

@ForOpenLeader yes he keeps saying he'll look at it in detail but he hasn't.

@ForOpenLeader because I need to do a tax assessment. HMRC requests it.

FGS ditch your accountant. That person is clearly useless. Educate yourself for crying out loud. Find our ALL the details of your pension provider. Log into your pension account and check the balance quarterly.

Are you getting £9,000 gross per month? If so you should have the sense to know that you should be salary sacrificing into pension to reduce your tax load.

OTOH if you’ve been paid £9,000 since April then you don’t get paid enough to justify an accountant, useless or otherwise.

Really I find uk PAYE employee attitudes towards tax to be astonishingly ignorant. This info is not secret. Everyone, everyone needs to learn how to read and reconcile a payslip, understand how much they pay in NI, pension,etc.

this is so basic and it’s essential to being a functioning adult, along with knowing how to clean a house or what constitutes decent nutrition.

with the internet now there is no excuse for not knowing this stuff.

If your pension is salary sacrifice your gross pay as per your p60 is net of pension contributions. That said on your payslip it would show total gross pay less pensions separately so I think looking at your payslip would help

Contact the HR team to say "My pay was X on contract, which would be £Y*12, but the payslip says £Z. Please can you have a look at this and let me know if this is an error? Thanks"

Your accountant may be on holiday for Christmas. If you need immediate responses then it might be better to move to a larger firm.

Oh and everyone should check their tax code and know if it’s correct or not!

This.

So you earn £110,000pa.
You have used a HMRC salary calculator to work out that £110,000 divided by 12 = £9,116.67.
But your payslips say £8,996 gross.

The obvious thing to do is to contact your EMPLOYER and ask them why.

Your accountant, who collates the information you provide and prepares your self assessment return, won't know why.

@ForOpenLeader I've been asked to do the assessment since I started making over 100 k a year, that was a few years ago now and my accountant always takes care of it for me.

This year has been the first year he's been ignoring my pleas for understanding what's happened. He is an accountant for everyone in the family and has been for 40 years. I think he's just not got to it. I also technically had 3 employees during the tax year in question. In reality I only had two employers, but one of my employers changed the entity they paid me through, after 6 months.

The 5 vs 6 k is net.

And I have sent my accountant my P45 etc as requested.

The self assessment threshold increased to £150k from £100k for the 2023/24 tax year.

No I'm not a contractor. I didn't jump around, I just left one job. The other change was because my company decided to change the entity that was paying me. I only worked for two companies that tax year. But was paid by 3.