but not the one you think.

Other half works for BA Cityflyer (a wholey owned subsiduary).

Her basic pay is £11.5K and she gets £2.20 flight pay (so for every hour at work she gets £2.20) which is not paid if she is on home standby even though she can be called in at an hours notice.

Now the flight pay was taxed on 20p of the £2.20 but HMRC have decided to apply tax to 45p in the pound, which really kicks a hole in her pay.

Ironically the well paid mainline staff don't pay tax on their flight pay because it is called something else.

So next time you fly Cityflyer be nice to the staff they are being painted as money grabbing BA staff when in reality they are being paid less and have taken a beating in their wage packet. Union too busy fighting the headline fight to care.

I'm sure she'll get a tax rebate on it eventually.

What's the reason given for the 45p rate?

The payment is being seen as a benefit or some such thing.

I think the OP was saying. They get £2.20, 45 p of which is taxed whereas previuosly less than half this amount was i.e. 20 P, so the tax per flight at 20% will be 9p.

Its all just income, therefore should be taxed as such. She should call up HMR&C and query it.

Isn't that about the normal income tax rate for that wage?

But the payment is for when they are away from home. On what are compulsory night stops, so would be seen as subsistence allowances.

Which you still pay tax on do you not?

no not if away from home, HMRC will reach a compromise with BA over what % should be treated as a benefit to save both admin. They presumably feel that Cityflyers spend less time away than the others do.

I've always paid tax on subsistance allowances in the past although it has been quite some time since I was actually paid one.

But its not a per diem, as she's just paid an additional amount per hour of work, therefore standard taxable income.

getting angry just thinking about the revenue.

so I won't say any more, apart from she has my sympathies

Now the flight pay was taxed on 20p of the £2.20 but HMRC have decided to apply tax to 45p in the pound, which really kicks a hole in her pay.

So just to get this right, I think what the OP is saying is:

– she was paying tax on 20p of the £2.20 – so for each hour of flight pay she was paying 20p x 22% = 9p of tax
– now she will pay tax on 45% of the £2.20 – so for each hour of flight pay she will be paying £2.20 x 45% taxable x 22% basic rate tax = 22p of tax

So she is 13 pence an hour worse off = say, 40 hour week over year x 50 weeks = about £260 a year. Or £20 a month.

It sucks for her – in my experience the Citiflyer cabin crew are generally great (I use BA from Edinburgh to London City fairly regularly) but the bigger picture is that in an effort to get as much money into the public purse as possible, HMRC are having a pop at all sorts of stuff they might have let go in the past. To be honest she's possibly quite lucky to get away with only 45% of the flight pay being taxable if they are sticking their beaks in. It's probably hard for BA to argue that something paid hourly is a subsistence allowance and not part of her wage – it's easier if it's an overnight or daily allowance for example.

I took p meant pence not percentage.

That's not a BA rant, I think it would go something like this….

I PITTY DA FOOL I AINT GETTIN ON NO PLANE SUCKA!!! YA CRAZY FOOL!!! etc etc