This part of our website looks to help the person who is employed.
It can be hard to know whether you are employed or self-employed, especially in those industries or businesses where employers have strong control. But it is important for you to understand the difference, not only for tax, but also for employment law purposes. We have therefore provided guidance to help you with the question Employed or self-employed?
Assuming that you are employed, we show you how to check your Tax allowances and tell you how to go about Checking your coding. Armed with this knowledge you will be able to try and ensure that the Pay As You Earn system is operating correctly for you.
The PAYE system generally works well to take tax from cash payments, but it gets more complicated when people get taxable benefits from their employers or they are entitled to deductions for expenses. We cover this under Employment benefits and expenses.
The government encourages people to save for their retirement and provides tax reliefs for that purpose. We explain more in Pensions for employees.
Most employees do not need to fill in a tax return (a form asking for all your income sources) and the PAYE system collects approximately the right amount of tax. Sometimes, the PAYE system cannot cope and you may be one of those people who need to understand Tax returns.
National Insurance contributions(NIC) are almost the same as a tax and you need to be able to see that the amounts you are paying are correct so we provide a guide to Checking your NIC.
The PAYE system is not foolproof and although it aims to collect the right amount of tax from you during a tax year there are many reasons as to why the amount paid by you may be incorrect. This should lead on to an automatic reconciliation by HMRC at the end of a tax year. We cover this possibility in Overpaid tax on wages or pension?
Losing your job is traumatic, but it is a time when you need to understand what is happening to your tax and NIC and so we provide a guide to Tax and redundancy.
