Employer overpaid massively

[Worried2424]

Hi all.
Partner has woken up this morning to discover he has been paid thousands more than he should have. Usually before deductions he is paid 2.3k but they've actually paid 31k today.
We usually receive a bit of universal credit, how on earth do we go about explaining this is a major cock up? He is going to work this morning to try and find out what has happened and will obviously have to give it back one way or another but this is going to wipe out the usual uc so how would we explain this?

You need to explain the situation to UC and also to his employer. The UC payment should be backdated if you can get evidence that you were overpaid and have paid it back. You're within your rights to withhold the amount of UC you are losing from his employer until you've got the backdated payment. Repay the sum minus the UC amount and repay that once you've received the UC.

Well, that's quite a cock up. Can you imagine the face of the person who overpaid that much when they realise...! 😱

Straight onto HR log the implications of there error
hopefully someone in UC will be able to deal

Payroll are incompetent.

It will affect his Tax no doubt

Oh dear, poor payroll… they should be able to resubmit their FPS and issue a new correct payslip (once he’s repaid). This will correct your UC. They might be reluctant as it’s a pain to do it

Has he been overpaid on the actual payroll or just the amount that’s gone into the bank?

Not sure if this is what you mean but he logged into the tax thing on the gov website and it is showing there the 31k that has been paid.

Thank you for the advice!

Don't forget to claim back NI payments too.

He’s been overpaid through the payroll then, I was meaning if his payslip still said his usual £2.5k but the amount gone into the bank was £31k it would be less of an issue to sort

Remember that tax and NI contributions are payroll’s issues to sort out with HMRC. If they ask for the gross amount tell them to jog on. You only need to pay back the net amount that ended up in your bank account.

What do you mean give it back "one way or another"

Only said that as I'm not sure how they sort this kind of thing.

Are you sure he's been overpaid? Are you definitely looking at the right information? Not sure why you'd look at the Gov site, have you looked at your bank statement?

Yes, it's in his bank account

If all the money is returned today then universal credit won't do anything about it. It's so obviously a mistake.

This happened to me and they also made me pay back the extra tax, NI and pension conts they'd overpaid 😒

Still paying it back now as they wouldn't just accept the amount I'd been overpaid. Yes it's very unfair but they are in control of my pay so i didn't actually have a choice and they said I'd pay less tax as I paid it back.

It really is unfair! He's gone to work now so I will have to wait to hear from him 🙁

To see if the error was on the system or just clumsy fingers when inputting payment information?

Of course it won't affect his tax. It's obviously a mistake, so all that needs to happen is for the excess money to be returned and his payslip checked to make sure it's correct (ie the OP hasn't said if it's his payslip that's wrong as well or just the amount that's appeared in his bank account). For UC, they just need to write in their journal that there's been a payroll error that will be corrected and his salary is £x this month as normal.

His pay day is today, which means it's likely the OPs partner works for the NHS or civil service so when running payroll for millions of people, many of whom get shift allowances, overtime etc there's always mistakes. One of my colleagues who was on about £25k pa got a load of extra money one month because his name was very similar to one of the director's, who was on over £100k. And yes he did have to pay it back and no it didn't affect his tax.

Also make sure that whatever time he spends trying to fix this mistake counts as "work time." He shouldn't have to spend his own time trying to fix their mistakes - this is not to be counted as a personal matter.

Thanks all for the info and advice. I've just spoken to him, it's not just him. Some people have been underpaid, some been paid 10s of thousands more than they should have. They've told him it will be sorted 'later' 🤨

If this is true you should talk to ACAS. That’s theft.

It's 100% true and the best part of it I work for our lovely government. And I rang ACAS and the Union at the time who basically said they are in control of paying me so essentially are I charge. I do pay less tax and NI every month I think so I suppose I'm getting it back that way. I'm 18 months into paying it back now.

@Nisbet Ah ok, I understand. Yeah that sucks. A family member of mine had something similar but their employer tried to be a arse and asked for the money back on a payment plan which would have meant that they had paid back the full amount (with tax) to the employer. That was argued correctly to be theft!