Who should I approach for PAYE advice, as an employee?

[MorrisZapp]

The government tax calculator has me four hundred quid short every month. Another website called listentotaxman has me one hundred quid a month short.

Is there a service that can help explain this to me? All the tax advisors I've found online seem to be about tax returns for the self employed, or tax for companies/ employers.

HMRC themselves have huge backlogs and I don't know what their response time is like.

Any ideas please? I'm in Edinburgh, the land of solicitors and wealth managers.

Your own payroll department would be the obvious place to contact! Are you a new employee in emergency tax? What deductions does your payslip have?

So the tax calculators say you should be receiving less than you are? Or you are receiving less than you think you should be?

Do you only have a salary? Or do you have any benefits in kind, salary sacrifice etc?

Your payroll department should be able to explain it to you but if you really wanted to ask a tax advisor they would check it all for you but obviously there would be a charge.

I’d phone your payroll, and HMRC - doesn’t take that long to get through about 20 mins last time I tried. Payroll will say tax code is HMRC but make sure you understand your pay slip really well (all the deductions, what your taxable monthly pay is) then phone them. Simple paye - best to speak directly to the horse’s mouth if the tax code is wrong.

I would just contact HMRC for advice as they issue your tax code to your employer. They answer pretty quickly at the moment.

Sorry, I think I'm paying too much tax. HMRC thinks I should be taking home 400 quid more than I am, the other calculator said I should be taking home 100 more than I am.

I do have health insurance through the company, but this is factored into my tax code. I pay 20% of my salary into my pension.

They both got my NI spot on, it was the tax that varied. I'll phone HMRC and see what they say, thanks.

Did you check they were working it out for Scottish tax rates?

What is your code? Did you put that you're a Scottish tax payer and your pension conts into the calculator?

Think it was about 3 mins wait time the other day for me. I was in shock, didn’t expect them to answer so quickly, all very efficient.

When you say HMRC thinks what exactly do you mean? It would be extremely unlikely that a computerised payroll system would calculate one person's tax wrongly. I'm assuming you've done the basic checks of tax code and year to date earnings