Documents

P45 This is a very important document and is a statement of pay and tax to date. When you leave an employer they will send you a P45. This should automatically be sent to you after you have been paid your last monthly salary/weekly wage.

It is a legal obligation of any employer to provide one. It will show your PAYE code, your total earnings so far in the tax year and how much tax you have paid since the start of the tax year. If you do not receive one, your tax code may not be correct and this will affect the amount of tax you pay.

It is essential that you get your correct tax code as soon as possible. If you are temping through an agency and you leave them to go and work for someone else, please bear in mind that they cannot send you a P45 until you have received all pay owed to you – including holiday pay.

P46 This form can be obtained from your Consultant. This can be used if you do not have a P45 and it will enable the tax office to issue an accumulative code.

P60 This is automatically sent to all employees currently employed at year end. It will show how much you have earned throughout the tax year and how much tax you have paid. You will only receive one of these each year. It is an important document which you need to keep safe, as you may need to use it to complete tax returns or answer other questions concerning your income.

Tax Codes

Basic Rate (BR) You are put on this tax code when you have not handed in a P45 or a P46. If you are on this code you will be taxed 22% of your salary. Obviously it is in your interest to get a P45 or P46 in to us as soon as possible to avoid paying basic rate tax.

489L Week 1 (Tax Year 2005/6) This is also known as 'emergency tax' and will show on your payslip as 489LX. Again if you are being taxed as a ‘week one’ person the tax office do not have a full picture of your financial affairs. For example, you can only be paid your tax-free allowance based just on the week for which you are being paid, i.e. if you hadn’t worked for three weeks prior to this, the tax office will not put that into their calculations. The current rate of tax on this code is:

• the first £94.03 of your wages is tax-free
• the next £40.19 of your wages is taxed at 10%
• anything after that will be taxed at 22%

but liable to change annually.

489L/Cumulative This will just show on your payslip as 489L and is the 'normal' tax code. You will get £4890 per year tax-free. On this code the rate of tax is the same as above but when calculating your tax-free allowance the tax office will look at your pay and tax year to date. They will take into consideration any weeks that you didn't work and therefore didn't receive any tax-free allowance.

National Insurance – Standard Contribution Code A

National Insurance is deducted at the same rate for everyone. You will not avoid NI by not providing us with your NI number. If you don’t provide us with your NI number we will contact you to obtain this.

On the first £94.00 of your earnings you are not deducted any National Insurance. For any earnings after £94.00 the deduction is 11%.

Usually a Consultant will ask for your NI number when you register with us or shortly after you start an assignment for us. It is a legal obligation that employers provide your NI number when they file their year end returns and so please help us by letting us have it as soon as possible.