Employment - salary q

[Emmascout1774]

would appreciate some advice from anyone who knows about this kind of thing.
I’ve worked as a teacher for a long time, held a number of management roles, am now part time.
recently a job was advertised through my school to work one extra day a week doing consultancy with other schools etc. (like in a MAT). The salary was advertised at £250 a day, once a week. I thought ok that sounds good, some extra money in addition to normal salary. Anyway I applied and was successful. I signed a letter accepting the job which clearly states that the salary is £250 per day.

I got my first pay check and the contribution from this role is a lot less than I expected. I contacted the finance team, thinking that a mistake had just been made. However I then was told that the £250 was before the school made my NI and pension contributions. So actually now it’s more like £150 a day.

i’m furious. However, am I right to be?

Yabu. Salary always is quoted before tax, NI and pension contributions .

All salaried posts are advertised as gross pay not net. As university post states.

Do you get separate pay slips for each job? Because if you do you need to check what your tax code is correct. On both payslips.

Everyone has different tax circumstances. They don't know your tax code or NIC status or whether you are repaying a student loan etc. They will always quote your gross salary in a contract, before any deductions.

Other not university

Why would you think it was the take home pay that was advertised? That's just not how it works.

I don’t think I’ve explained myself properly.
what I mean is - I was told the salary was £250 per day.
when I got my pay slip they had paid me significantly less than that.
then when my deductions for tax etc were taken off, it was significantly less again.
so basically they are taking their contributions to my pension/national insurance out of my stated salary before putting that salary on my monthly pay. I then pay my own contributions on top of that. (I know that gross salary is always before tax! But my gross salary is actually less than advertised because they’ve docked it already.)

I know that!!! That’s not what’s happened!

I'm assuming as some who has been in work a while, you know the difference between gross pay and net pay?

Why do you pay your own contributions on top? It’s all very confusing

If they are taking their contribution out of your agreed salary then it's no longer their contribution... it's yours.

That does sound dodgy.

Yes funnily enough I am aware of that.

Yes that wasn’t clear from your initial post. Definitely dodgy

As you've explained it here, you need to take this further with hr. They cannot deduct tax and ni BEFORE it goes on your payslip as otherwise you have no evidence that the tax was paid.

That’s what they are doing. They are taking their employers contribution out of my salary before they pay it to me.
i then pay my personal contributions on top.

i have paid it - it’s on my salary - NI and pension contributions taken out.
howwver the amount they’ve given me in the first place is less than they said they would. When I queried this they said that the £250 a day actually wasn’t all for me, some of it is taken off for their NI and pension contributions as an employer. Even though my acceptance letter clearly stated the salary was £250 a day.

What do they say when you query it? It sounds wrong of them to have deducted their own contributions from it but that has happened to me before.

Sorry just seen you have queried it. When I did, they initially fobbed me off, so spoke to someone else and got it sorted.

That certainly sounds wrong to me. £250 is the cost to them of employing you, which is higher than gross pay, gross pay is the standard for all employment advertising so it ought to be very explicit if this were different.

Could it be something like they’ve set £250 as a self employed/consultancy payment, but as you’re PAYE they have to take everything off that. Sorry I’ve no idea if that’s an option in this scenario but it’s the only vaguely above board answer that occurs to me.

So what you are saying is that advertised a job for £250 per day, but are now saying that offer includes their pension and NI contributions?

If my interpretation is correct they are wrong. They cannot do that.

Do you mean they oaud you 250 gross then deducted your personal NI and personal pension contributions, OR are you saying the 250 included the employer's NI and pension contributions?

Agree

@Emmascout1774 ex HMRC employee here (some time ago) can you show your payslip blanking out name etc to see if sense can be made of this?

it is possible they have reworked your tax code, which they cannot do either.

It sounds like they budgeted for a consultant who would invoice them £250 a day, rather than an employee. Would you do it on a consultancy basis?

If you work one day per week term time only that's 39 weeks. Plus 5.6 weeks holiday makes 44.6 weeks.

This is then divided into twelve equal payments.

That's probably what has happened

For your normal (pre extra-day) salary does your employer's pension contribution show on your payslip?

I have vague memories of a tax-related juggle that a previous employer set up many years ago. I originally started work with a salary £X and normal deductions of pension ni etc showing on my payslip but at some point they got me to sign an agreement which meant that some of the deductions didn't show on the oayslip and the gross salary figuring on the payslip would appear lower but there was some maths equations that demonstrated that I would still get paid the same either way because the pension contributions would still be made but notified elsewhere not on the payslip. I remember the letter saying that if I needed proof of salary they would do a letter confirming the higher amount as the payslips were lower.

I don't remember exactly why but I think it might be that employer NI contributions are taken from the pre-pension salary so doing it that way saved them a bit. In retrospect it sounds like a fiddle, but it made sense at the time.

Might something like this be applying to you?

If pension, tax and ni were all taken of at standard rates without any fiddle like this how much would you keep of £250? It depends on your employee pension contribution rate but assuming the 5% minimum you would only keep £171 in extra take-home pay. If your contributions are 6.7% as the standard for teacher pension then your expected take-home would be £167.94 per week

There are 39 weeks in the school year and the uplift is spread across 12 months so I would expect your monthly payslip to show £545 per month in higher take-home pay compared to what you got before.

What is the actual figure?