MEZIESBLOG

Almost one million people who are owed a tax refund haven’t claimed it back, according to HMRC. 

People are entitled to money back if they have paid too much income tax. 

At the end of each tax year, HMRC works out whether you have paid the correct amount and typically issues a rebate, but you can put in a claim yourself if you think you have overpaid. 

Here we explain how to check if you are owed money and how to claim it back…

Have you paid too much tax?

To check if you’ve paid too much tax, you first need to look at your income tax for last year. 

You can do that here – you’ll need your national insurance number, government gateway user ID, and a way to verify your identity, which you can do by using the Gov.UK ID Check app. 

Once you have found out the amount you’ve paid, you can use the government tax checker to see if you might be owed a refund. 

There are several reasons you might have overpaid but some of the common ones are: 

• You got the wrong tax code from your employer or HMRC;
• You were paid by an old employer and a new one in the same month;
• You stopped working during the tax year;
• If you are a pensioner, you paid too much tax on a pension lump sum.

How to claim your refund

This depends on your situation. 

If you are employed or a pensioner, HMRC will usually send you a letter telling you how much you’re owed. 

These letters are typically sent from June to November and will tell you to make a claim online or using the app – which it says is the quickest way to get your money back. 

You will need your government gateway ID to log in. Once you have signed in, select the PAYE section. This will give you a summary of your income tax, and you can update this section with any missing information. 

If you are due a refund, a button will appear telling you to ‘claim your refund’. Click this and HMRC will pay the amount you are owed into your bank account within five working days. 

You don’t need a letter to go through this process. 

If you are self-employed or have other income, you’ll need to submit a self-assessment tax return, showing evidence of your income and expenses. 

You can do this in the HMRC app by selecting the self-assessment section after logging in.