Need your pay and tax details?
You may need your pay and tax details – sometimes called your employment history – for all sorts of reasons, including to do with your work, getting a loan or a mortgage, or for an immigration issue. Here we tell you how to get them.
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What are pay and tax details?
If you are an employee, your pay and tax details are a summary of everything you have earned and the tax you have paid in the different employments you have held. You may need your pay and tax details for several reasons including:
- Proof of your earnings – you might need them when applying for a mortgage or looking to rent a property. You may also have to show them when applying for a loan or other financial products.
- Employment verification – they may be needed for background checks or during certain applications – for example to renew a visa or for other immigration purposes
- Compensation claim – if you’re involved in an accident or become ill and seek compensation or wish to draw down on some kind of protection policy, you may be asked for them.
If you are employed then you should probably be paid under the Pay As You Earn system (PAYE). As an employee, you should receive the following from your employer:
- a payslip each time you are paid
- a P60 following the end of the tax year (unless you left the employment part way through the tax year)
- a P45 if you leave an employment part way through the tax year
You should be able to put together your pay and tax details from these documents – the numbers that you need are the gross pay amounts and tax deducted amounts.
However sometimes we know people may lose their pay documents or they may never receive them in the first place. We also know that sometimes, you may need an official record of your pay and tax details. So on some occasions, you may need to get this information from HMRC.
Getting your pay and tax details from HMRC.
Because your employer has to send HMRC a copy of your PAYE information every time you are paid, HMRC should have a record of your pay and tax details.
You can check the pay and tax details your employer sent across to HMRC going back up to five years, in HMRC’s app or your Personal Tax Account (PTA).
For the PTA, once you are logged in, you should click on ‘Pay As You Earn (PAYE)’ and then the tile below:
If you don’t have it set up on your phone yet, HMRC’s App also allows you to do this in just a few clicks. The App may even be able to display the latest real time payroll information from your employer, before you get your payslip.
For periods more than five years ago, it appears there is a paper application form on GOV.UK to complete to retrieve your pay and tax details. The form mentions being for the purposes of compensation claims only, so you may want to check with HMRC whether you can complete it for other purposes or whether another route is more appropriate (for example, via a subject access request).
What if my pay and tax details look wrong?
Your pay and tax details will include information such as, your employer’s name, their PAYE reference, the start and end date of your employment, along with the amount of your gross pay and tax withheld.
If any of these elements look wrong, firstly, review any payslips or other pay documentation you can gather together to check any discrepancies.
Gross pay and/or tax withheld looks wrong?
In some cases, the problem might have arisen because your employer has made an error when submitting payroll data to HMRC. Where HMRC hold incorrect payroll details, this can make your pay and tax details look wrong. You should try speaking to the employer concerned to alert them to the mistake. They may need to send a new or replacement payroll submission to HMRC to amend the information held on their records. If the employer won’t do this, then unfortunately there isn’t much you can do - it is for HMRC to pursue with the employer. However if you come across a subsequent problem as a consequence of the incorrect payroll details, for example, it means HMRC think you have underpaid tax, then you could seek some advice from a professional tax adviser – including from the charity TaxAid if you are on a low income.
Missing employments?
Sometimes, employers use unlawful or fraudulent practices which can affect your pay and tax. For example, your employer might treat you as falsely self-employed and therefore fail to pay you under the PAYE system at all. In other situations an employer may act like they are doing things properly, for example make deductions in respect of PAYE - but then not report them or pay them over to HMRC. This can make your pay and tax record look incomplete and, in some instances, your pay and tax history with HMRC may be missing entire employments. You can read about this type of activity on GOV.UK. If you think something like this might have happened to you, then you could report your employer to HMRC for further investigation.
Information you don’t recognise
In some cases, an HMRC error can mean that your pay and tax records might not look correct. This could be because of a "mixed records" situation. This is where HMRC’s systems randomly scrambles your tax record with someone else, totally unrelated to you. This can mean that HMRC think you have employment income that you don’t and/or that you start getting odd correspondence or letters about unpaid tax. The best thing to do is to phone HMRC and explain to them that you think your record has been mixed with someone else’s. We understand that HMRC have a process in place to deal with situations like this and should be able to help you.
Finally, if you see some information on your pay and tax details about an employer you don’t recognise, then this could be because you were paid through an intermediary that was different from who you understood you were working for, for example an agency or umbrella company. This is quite a typical arrangement, but can be confusing. You can read more about agencies and umbrella companies in our guidance.
