Students paying tax - advice please

[ampm]

My 18 year old is in first year at university and last week she joined lots of other students waitressing at a well-known 4 day event (savings for a ski trip).

Everyone has just been paid and daughter is upset to see that she's had tax and NI deducted. Since the age of 16 she's done a similar job in local hotel but never had to pay tax and these wages are certainly well below the personal allowance.

I'm not very clued up on finances and don't understand why some people have received the full amount. Can she reclaim these deductions? All advice very welcome, please.

She can claim back any tax paid either at the end of the tax year (April 6th)or earlier if there's no chance of her doing any more paid employment in the year e.g. if it was a summer job. Some employers of temporary staff use a tax code for them so that they don't pay tax. Others put them on an 'emergency code' which usually means tax is deducted.

To make the claim she has to download a P50 form from the HMRC website link to the page here and submit it together with any supporting documents i.e. payslips. It's not difficult.

Excellent advice, thank you Chil1234. Have just downloaded P50 and will take it from there!

I don't know why it's different for some people, but IME this is normal, it was the same for me when doing summer internships as a student. They assume you're earning the same rate for the whole year and tax the income accordingly. You just have to claim it back as mentioned above, and they send you a nice big cheque!

She shouldn't be paying tax at all.
Did she officially leave the other hotel?
If not, she is paying tax because this is her 2nd job, and she will be able to claim it back at the end of the year. If this is the case, she can ring up HMRC and ask them to swap tax codes and put the emergency code on the older job, and then she won't get taxed on this one.

Hope that helps, have a cracking headache and can't explain myself properly!

Oh i didnt read any of that properly. Ignore me!

Chil1234 - the P50 form asks for a P45, as if the applicant has been in a full or part-time regular job, whereas this was a one-off stint of 4 days casual waitressing.

Before university daughter did a few hours a week at local hotel and did not get taxed on the income. Because they have asked her to continue with this in the holidays, there was no P45 issued when she left home.

Now I'm confused again ......

So she's actually still employed? Then the P50 wouldn't be appropriate as that's for when you stop working part-way through a tax year. I think she'd need to contact the appropriate Tax Office and ask what documents they need. She should get a P60 at some point which they might need to see.

She needs to get a P45 from the hotel she worked at in the summer. Then there is a box to tick for 'earnings since leaving the employer named in the application' which includes the definition 'casual'. That would be for the waitressing when they deducted tax. I'd suggest she contacts the HMRC helpline directly if she's not sure about anything

BTW... do get your daughter to do the rest of the leg-work for herself, won't you? :)

Sorry, I must be really dense :(

But yes, technically I suppose she is "still employed".

What I don't get is why (a) the few hours a week at local hotel she did before leaving for university were not taxed - presumably because income was within personal allowance but that (b) the finite period of casual work - still well within personal allowance, has been taxed.

Guess she needs to have conversation with tax office!

Because she didn't/couldn't take a P45 along to the casual employer. In the absence of a P45 you are often put on an emergency tax code which means tax is deducted. The hotel had a different approach and probably applied a standard tax code..

Yes that makes sense now, thank you all.