Income Tax !

In my 9–5 job I get paid monthly but get a quarterly performance based bonus, this can vary massively in amount, I have only been there for two quarters now and my first one was £700 and my second one was £6900 so I understand this makes calculating tax slightly troublesome but I don’t understand why it seems to be an impossible feat for the UK Tax office. I expected to be over taxed the month I got my bonus, and I was, my total deductions for that month were £4200 (which for the record is more than double my usual monthly pay). I was gutted but not worried as it normally balances itself back out the following month. So today I got my February payslip and to my annoyance I hadn’t received any tax back :( . So I logged into my Online Tax account to see what was going on.

Even their own portal doesn’t know what it’s doing. Here are the figures on different pages of the same portal.

• Estimated Tax due for 2021/22 — £2500ish
• Tax already paid in 2021/22 — £5107.60
• Estimated over/underpayment — Underpayment by £1300ish

How the Scooby do does that make sense?

• By my calculation I need to pay £3932.80 tax this year so they owe my £1174.79
• By their own figures they owe me around £2600
• But they are stating I owe them £1300

For the record I am a qualified bookkeeper from a previous life so I have a decent grasp on tax especially income tax which is relatively simple in the UK. I am sure I will get my £1174.79 back but it’s just so frustrating that the Tax offices own website can be so confused!

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