Emergency Tax

[chaosisawayoflife]

How long should it take before a new employer takes you off emergency tax and onto the right tax code? And when they do, do you get the extra tax paid back immediately or do you have to wait until year end?

as soon as your employer gets either your p45 from your last employer - or the tax office notifys them what tax they should be taking.

If you have got your p45 then hand it in straight to the wages/finaance department to speed things up

you should get your back tax from when wages know what they should have been taxing you.

Hmmm, I gave them my P45 when I started, which was at the beginning of October, but I've just got my November payslip and I'm on code BR still. May have to give them a little chase tomorrow and find out what's going on. Thanks.

Take your copy of the P45 in just incase. You should have the overpayment back through payroll quite quickly once they sort it - if they are any good

Your payroll dept sound incredibly inefficient. There is no way you should have been put on code BR if you handed in your P45 as soon as you started. They should have set you up on the payroll system as soon as you started with your correct tax code. Code BR should only be used if an employee has neither provided a P45 or filled in a form P46 and confirmed that they do not have any other job.

Is your payroll done by an outside bureau? That may explain the mix-up.

At the very worst if your P45 information is not put onto the payroll system you will get a tax refund direct from the tax office at the end of the tax year (end of March) and you will automatically be put on the standard tax code for the new tax year.

However, it is a real pain having to pay too much tax for this long so I would have a strong word with your employers and get them to sort this out. You will get all the tax overpayment refunded to you in the next payslip you get after your P45 information has been updated.

Ask your payroll department if they're willing to take confirmation over the phone from the tax office about what code you should be on. If yes, give your tax office a ring.

In most cases, they can put you on what's called a week1/month1 code until they receive the P45 information from your employers. A wk1/mth1 code will not give you back any tax you've overpaid, but will ensure you pay the correct amount of tax each month from now on, until you can be placed on a cumulative code.

Then get your employer to call the tax office, who will confirm what tax code they should be operating for you. It will all be followed up with the correct paperwork.

If your employers won't take the information over the phone, it's still worth your while to call your tax office and get put on a wk/mth1 code as it doesn't take that long for the form to reach your employer and if they've registered to receive tax codes electronically, they'll have it almost at the same time.

If you don't have any benefits like a company car, the tax code you want to be on (while waiting for all the P45 info to be processed) is 647L wk1.

Thanks all. I phoned my employer and it turns out my P45 was helpfully filed away in my personnel file.
They've said they'll sort it and I should get the overpaid tax back in December pay packet.