It just gets worse and worse. I picked this up in the last newsletter and the situation is now rapidly deteriorating but HMRC seem to have chosen a path and are doggedly pursuing it. So rather than hear me rant – see below how some of our fellow professionals see it…
We are a payroll bureau we are drowning in tax codes since this came in. We have 300 clients and we are downloading easily over 50 new codes every day, sometimes double that. Many of them are only moving a couple of points but most annoying is so many of them are on an M1/W1 basis so unlikely to get tax right at the end of the year.
Chaos! Payment of a bonus in May has meant significant number of garbage codes. Individuals have tried amending online and are being put on M1 non-cumulative codes. Out of pocket by literally £100s in month of impact. Someone not too bright has implemented this!
Employer – lots of new Tax Codes being received in our payroll dept, sometimes as many as 4 for one employee in a month – and all incorrect! HMRC need to look at this ASAP, otherwise there’ll be uproar in the payroll world and many disgruntled or confused people out there!
We expect that this will inflate the number of P800s issued (over/under collection of tax under PAYE) which will then be rolled into the next batch of dynamic codes from April 2019. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.
Abandon hope
Our advice to employers – there is nothing that you can do. Sorry! HMRC rules are very clear; tax code notices must be applied and remember that you/we don’t have any information regarding how the code has been derived – that goes to the employee in a nice brown envelope to their home address.
Our advice to your employees – if you think your tax code is wrong, call HMRC and they will almost certainly re-issue as per your request. But it will not stop dynamic coding from changing it again; as the song goes…Eat. Sleep. Ring. Repeat. Or something like that.
