I get a mental block dealing with this so I might simply be being stupid and mixing up tax years in my head.

I have a P45 showing I left 30 Mar 21
HMRC have sent me a copy of “Benefit Summary Report – Employer Compliance System”
This says 2021/22 P11D <<employer name and codes>> with over £2k of benefits.

Is this 2021/22 P11D not from April 2021 to April 2022

and as I left in March 21 and the benefits ceased the day I left an error from my former employer???

(I have mailed employer and the reply I got was “did you not realise these benefits were taxable”… I replied with Yes.. but this is after I left, please check and that is the last communication from them a couple of weeks ago)

I get very confused over tax… and I just want to check I’m not confused over years.

When was your actual final pay day? Your last day of employment doesn’t matter, it’s when you actually receive the pay. I ran afoul of this with a big redundancy payment a few years back.

Left employer on March 31st, final pay with redundancy payment was end of April. Despite my employment ending in the prior tax year, because the payment is made in the new one, that’s what tax rules applied

@stevextc Did you receive any payments after the P45 was issued; for example they made a mistake and owed you back/holiday pay, so paid it to you in April (or later)?

@BoardinBob Presumably your P45 would have been dated 30th April (or thereabouts) in this instance?

What benefit is it? It might be that if your c2w bike was written off in mid April, that’s the tax year it hit

For the last two years HMRC have insisted I still have private medical benefit from a job I left over 2 years ago.

For the last two years HMRC have insisted I still have private medical benefit from a job I left over 2 years ago.

I get this with my current employer, even though last year (and previous years) I told both them and HMRC I didn’t get this benefit. No doubt I’ll be doing it this year too.

boardingbob
Answering this as it gives the most info to everyone

When was your actual final pay day? Your last day of employment doesn’t matter, it’s when you actually receive the pay. I ran afoul of this with a big redundancy payment a few years back.

Left employer on March 31st, final pay with redundancy payment was end of April. Despite my employment ending in the prior tax year, because the payment is made in the new one, that’s what tax rules applied

Yep so same thing exactly on payments.
I paid tax as I was earning a full salary for the whole year but then paid an accountant and they claimed back the pay part.
The benefits are medical (and smaller part critical illness over) both of which definitively ended 31 March 21 but have been reported to HMRC as being paid for 2021/22

If anything I think what happened is because that final payment was in the other tax year they just put through a P11D as if I was getting/paying the benefits from my salary sacrifice.

For the last two years HMRC have insisted I still have private medical benefit from a job I left over 2 years ago.

I don’t know where the error is… either the company keep submitting or HMRC keep copying but I’m stuck as to how to prove to HMRC I didn’t receive these benefits without the former employer saying they made a mistake or HMRC records are incorrect ???

So it seems I’m not as stupid/confused as I worried…
However .. I’m still no nearer to how to resolve this.

Do I write to HMRC? Keep trying to get my old employer to make a correction or what?

You could ring them. Both my daughters have had to do this recently as they have had more than one job on the go at any one time in the same tax year. Youngest has three to get enough money saved to take 18 months out.

Both were sorted very quickly and amicably over the phone

<Tannoy> @MoreCashThanDash to the forum </ Tannoy>

Failing that herself may be able to help after 7pm tonight (if I remember!)

Not my corner of the evil empire, sorry

For the last two years HMRC have insisted I still have private medical benefit from a job I left over 2 years ago.

Apparently I’d been being taxed on a company car I no longer had for 3-4 years after being made redundant. Was a substantial amount when the error was corrected.

Sandwich

Failing that herself may be able to help after 7pm tonight (if I remember!)

Thanks.. if its someone knows the system then this started when I had to do what Boarding Bob said… my redundancy got paid in 21/22 but then I got taxed as if I had worked all 21/22 which I duly stuck on the next tax return and something like a £6000 repayment..
This then went through that new “we need to identify you” process (I’ve read about) so sent a load of copies of documents by post…
This then resulted in a “Correcting an error on your return” (which results in about £500 being taken off the £6000 unless I can somehow prove I didn’t …

I had thought this was my previous employer making a screw-up (par for the course) reinforced from the P11D (sorta) thing I got “Benefit Summary Report – Employer Compliance System” (I assumed this was a system where the business submit) but from other stories it seems it can just be HMRC screwing this up by themselves?

Either way the letter says I have only 30 days “if I do not agree with the correction” (from 13 March)

Tracey

You could ring them.

The letter says I need to write to them at “Individuals and Small Businesses” ..
I suppose to some extent it depends who screwed up?
If its my previous employer and they have told HMRC I got paid this via their electronic submission I can’t see HMRC shifting until they admit their mistake?

I guess its also possible they paid it in error… though quite what that would mean seems even more complicated.

@stevextc Herself says that you will need to write in and no you’re not confused. Stress that you left on the date shown on your P45 and no benefits were carried over into the next tax year. Did you upset someone at that employer who is now making sure you have a hard time? Or is it simple incompetence? There is now a lot of reliance on employer reporting in PAYE.

From personal experience you may also need to speak to someone higher up the food chain than the usual people answering the phone as there can be a lot of ‘computer says no’ if the officer at the other end doesn’t fully understand what you need and how to make the computer do it! Whatever you do do not shout, it could be costly if you end up time expired.

@sandwich
Just replying on the phone here
Cheers pls thank ms-sandwich

I think i understand this was most likely a. Error made at my previous employer rather than some HMRC error.

Basically global multinational with everything spread around the world – I don’t even know what countries benefits or payroll are in (payroll used to be Philippines) and communication is all via mailboxes rather than actual mail addresses.
Almost impossible anyone involved in the benefits / P11D even knows my name, let alone remembers me and more likely the whole unit has been made redundant and the process moved to a cheaper country since I left.

The operating model is basically to do admin cheap as chips and IT driven. If they had to update the rules in the system due to some UK tax changes then it may have required a manual entry/correction or something.

Tbh – I’d be unsurprised if the company had done the same to hundreds in the waves of voluntary redundancies because the process was wrong or the software implementation which is probably positive for me as HMRC should be able to see others who took the same redundancy package.

Don’t underestimate how clueless HMRC are.

When I got the big redundancy payment I mentioned earlier, the first thing I did was phone HMRC to make sure the tax deducted was correct. Turns out it was wrong according to the person on the phone, and I’d overpaid by £11k. Got a cheque a few days later for the amount.

About 2 years later they get in touch and tell me they were wrong, and I had to pay them the £11k back! Appealed it but apparently it was my fault for not knowing they’d got it wrong. An absolutely useless organisation.

Boardingbob

Don’t underestimate how clueless HMRC are.

Yeah totally see that, the problem I have (and I’m guessing you had) is being trapped between 2 clueless organisations one or both of which made a mistake.

Somehow between them I often got changed tax codes but on a few occasions I’d get 2 in the same post… and given my aversion to this sort of stuff I’d just rely on it being sorted out by the end of the year.

I got myself in a twist over declaring my bank interest of my self assessment for example as I couldn’t get it to do pence and I’m always terrified of making a mistake. At the time it was something like £5.44 so I rounded it up to be safe.

@BoardinBob Presumably your P45 would have been dated 30th April (or thereabouts) in this instance?

Hmm. This has prompted me to go back and look at everything.

My last day of employment was 30th March 2018
I received my redundancy payment on 30th April 2018

So my employment ended in the 2017/18 tax year, yet my redundancy payment was made in the 2018/19 tax year

My P45 from that employer shows my last date of employment as 30th March 2018 (2017/18 tax year), and the numbers on that P45 cover the redundancy payment and it shows it as relating to the 2018/19 tax year as there’s nothing else on the P45 apart from the redundancy payment. No other salary accumulated.

When HMRC notified me that they’d incorrectly advised me of the tax refund, I queried the date issue and at the time they told me that taxation was based on when the payment was made, not when the employment period was.

I’m now confused as to whether my former employer has done the P45 incorrectly by putting my leaving date in the 2017/18 year, yet the payment relating to the 2018/19 year

Boardingbob

I’m now confused

I thought I was just being stupid .. then actually think about it and seems I’m not.. then get responses from ex exmployer makes me think I’m being stupid again… this thread and especially thanks to ms-sandwich makes me feel I’m not.

At the back of my mind I don’t want to make a mistake comes back to haunt me.

It’s a common issue that arises when people leave emplyoment and it straddles two tax years. The P45 will have two dates on it; the last day of work and the process/payment date – these arent the same thing. For example, if you are paid in arrears (e.g. monthly), then the lag between your last day of work and getting that pay can be up to a month; it’s not an issue at any other time of the year, but if you leave on the 31st March, and your usual pay day is the 23rd (for example), then you’ve worked an extra week into the next pay cycle. This will be paid the following month (April) which is the new tax year.
If you’ve agreed a redundancy package, that may be given as notice or gardening leave, even though you’ve not gone into work and your last working day was the 31st March, it often has to be paid a month later as you’re still employed during that period. You could even find yourself in the situation where you receive a payslip and your P45 at the end of May, as you’ve gone into that pay cycle, assuming the company or organsiation are rigid with their payroll processes.
The P45 is submitted electronically to HMRC as part of a Full Payment Submission in RTI (Real Time Information; the employer tells HMRC about PAYE payments at the time they are made) so from their point of view if submitted in April with a date after 5th April it is in the subsequent tax year. PAYE is based around the point the money is paid/received, and it’s worth remembering that it’s not an exact measurement of your tax liability, but an estimate of the tax that should be paid based on HMRC’s understanding of income received and their personal circumstances – hence people being on different tax codes to allow for things like pensions, benefits, etc.

hightensionline

It’s a common issue that arises when people leave emplyoment and it straddles two tax years.

I get that part and the redundancy payment was what carried over … I got taxed like that was a regular monthly payment and then submitted the self assessment and they came back saying they owe me £6000 (prove your identity)

I did that and now they are saying I received medical insurance benefits (and critical illness cover) for the entire year.
I was told that benefits ceased the day you left..

It’s entirely possible someone even paid them (I assume the insurance company gets paid a lump sum not individual so they got 1000 instead of 999 ? )… but then I couldn’t use them.