Year on year many people will have overpaid tax for the fiscal year. There are many reasons for that happening. These include erroneous tax code, maybe you had a number of jobs or you may have stopped work part way through the tax year. Tax may have been deducted from your savings income when you are actually a non-taxpayer or you may not have claimed all available reliefs you were liable to claim. If you have overpaid tax, how do you get it back?
Erroneous Tax Code
A wrong tax code could only mean one thing – the wrong amount of tax will have been deducted from your daily, weekly or monthly pay. This may result in overpayment of tax. You can contact us to check how much tax you should have paid, but you can also use the calculator on the HMRC website which can be found here: www.gov.uk/check-income-tax.
It is usually the case that the Revenue do check employee pay records and you should receive a tax calculation (P800) from HMRC by the end of July if you have overpaid tax and by the end of September if you have under paid. If one is due a refund this should be received within 14 days of receiving the tax calculation from HMRC.
Discontinued Work
If you are an employee and you stop work part way through the tax year and do not work for the remaining period of that year, you may overpay tax as you will not have received the benefit of your full personal allowance during the year. If that is the case, then you can claim a refund by completing form P50, if you are not claiming benefits and not going to be working for at least four weeks. The form P50 can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-tax-claiming-tax-back-when-you-have-stopped-working-p50
Non Tax Payer and Savings Income
Non-taxpayers shouldn’t pay tax on their savings income. If you are a non-taxpayer and tax was deducted from your savings income, then you should be able to reclaim it by completing and submitting form R40 the Revenue. The form R40 can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-tax-claim-for-repayment-of-tax-deducted-from-savings-and-investments-r40)