Quick income tax question

[brunette123]

I have an annual personal allowance of 10k. For the tax year ended April 15 I have submitted my tax return. My employment income was only around half of my allowance so no tax due. I have a few shares and received dividends on them and have some savings and received interest - not much. HMRC calculate I owe tax and am not sure why given that I have over 5k personal allowance unused. Any ideas? I can call HMRC on Monday but wondered if I have misunderstood or overlooked something - I didn't think I would have to pay any tax given that all income from all sources is below 10k
many thanks in advance

Did you include Gift Aid on the return?

Could you post a copy/screen shot of the sa302 (with your name and ref numbers hidden of course).

hi
yes I included some gift aid on there as I pay money each month to charities - I thought this did not mean any tax liability to me am I wrong? So am I having to pay tax because I have made charitable donations? thanks again

Hi brunette. I suspected as much.

You declared on your tax return that you had "Gift Aided" charitable donations. This means that the charity/charities would have reclaimed the tax from HMRC (25p per pound). However, you were not a taxpayer, so the tax was actually not reclaimable. So, you are being asked to cover it now.

There is more info here under the heading entitled "paying..."

www.gov.uk/donating-to-charity/gift-aid

thank you so much - of course my fault - for many years I was a higher rate tax payer so it made sense - will have to organise things differently now.
Thank you for taking the trouble to clarify things for me.

No problem!

I suggest that you inform the charities that you're no longer a taxpayer, asap. Then, next year, on your 15/16 return, remember to only include the charitable payments from Apr '15 - Aug '15 in the Gift Aid box.