Tax Forum :: Free Tax Advice

Hi,
I just started my self assessment for the year 2017/18.My P 60 shows my final tax code is 1190L.My tax calculation in self assessment shows only £11500 being taken off from the income as personal allowance. I believe it should be £ 11900 according to the tax code.I might be wrong.Could some one please explain why there is difference between my final tax code and actual personal allowance? Thanks.

What does your notice of coding say?

You are confusing your tax code and your Personal Allowance, two totally different things.

Your tax code is simply a provisional number which is used in an attempt to try and get the correct amount of tax deducted during the year.

Obviously there are a myriad of things which often mean that isn't possible i.e. those in Self Assessment make use of the fact that leaving things out of a tax code, for example an estimate of say rental profit, can delay payment of tax from it being deducted during the tax year in question to 31 January after the tax year ends.

Your Personal Allowance can never (for 2017:18) exceed £11,500 so to have a tax code of 1190L it must have had some additional allowances or reliefs (or additional allowances/reliefs and some deductions).

I believe you can look at last years tax code on your Personal Tax Account on gov.uk and this should show how the 1190L was calculated.

It is entirely possible you need to add an additional entry to your tax return but equally it's possible your tax code could have included something which isn't actually due for 2017:18. In which case it might be prudent to ask HMRC to amend your current tax code to reflect whatever has changed.

Thank you very much for the explanation.I claimed tax relief on £ 400 worth of professional subscription to one of the Royal Colleges during the tax year 2016/2017.That might be the reason.Thank you.

Thank you very much for the explanation.I claimed tax relief on £ 400 worth of professional subscription to one of the Royal Colleges during the tax year 2016/2017.That might be the reason.Thank you.

Ok that makes sense

Note hmrc will have presumed that as you claimed the subscriptions the previous year that you would also make the same claim ye 5/4/2018.

If you made these payments ye 5/4/2018 enter the claim in the relevant employment page and the income subject to tax will drop by £400 (presuming total is the same) getting you back to where you should be - in that this entry would normally be tax neutral overall at year end.

Note if you didn't make any payments ye 5/4/2018 you will potentially owe tax on £400 income as hmrc reduced your taxable salary by £400 during the year - if you didn't want to claim for that amount ye 5/4/2018 hmrc would say you should have notified them at the time the tax code was released.