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Are you paying the wrong amount of tax? Many people are, and even HM Revenue & Customs sometimes slips up.
So, whether it's having the wrong tax code, not submitting your tax return or others errors, read our list of 10 common tax mistakes below to ensure you’re not giving the taxman more than you should be.
The amount of income you can have tax-free goes up once you reach 65; this is called your personal allowance. You get the higher allowance from the start of the tax year in which you turn 65 (or 75), so make sure your tax office knows your date of birth.
You get an extra allowance if you are registered blind, or if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland and your sight is too poor for you to do any work for which eyesight is essential. You can claim for the year before you were registered, providing that you have evidence of blindness for that year.
Couples can save tax by giving investments to the partner who pays the lower rate of tax – but it has to be a real gift, not a gift in name only. If you are married or a civil partner and one of you was born before 6 April 1935, you also get an extra married couple’s allowance.
If your income is too low to use up all your married couple’s allowance or blind person’s allowance, you can transfer the unused part to your husband, wife or civil partner. Contact your tax office for more information.
Income tax is taken off your bank or building society interest before you get it. If your total income – including pension, earnings and interest – is less than your allowances, fill in form R85 to get your interest paid with no tax taken off. Your bank or building society can provide this form.
If you’ve paid too much tax because you’ve failed to claim an allowance or tax relief, or because too much tax has been deducted from your income, you can usually claim tax back within four years of the end of tax year in question. Ask your tax office for form R40.
Your tax code tells your pension company or employer how much pay you can be paid free of tax – tax is taken off the rest. Your tax office will write to you from time to time explaining how the code was worked out. Check they have given you the right allowances, that the amount of pension or other income shown is correct, and query anything that you don’t understand.
If you change your hours, tell HMRC. They may need to adjust your tax code. Be particularly careful if you have a job as well as a pension - you get a code for each source of income, but it’s common for the wrong amount to be deducted.
Make sure your tax office knows in good time if you expect to start receiving a pension in the next few months so that they can sort out your tax code.
If you are sent a tax return, you must fill it in by 31 October, or by 31 January if you do it online. New, tougher, penalties make missing the deadline expensive – there’s an automatic penalty, plus higher penalties after a further three months.
For more information visit www.hmrc.gov.uk
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More money in your pocket booklet A guide to claiming benefits for people over pension age. (PDF 164KB)
Pension Credit leaflet3 steps to find out if someone you know qualifies for Pension Credit. (PDF 105KB)
Downloads
A download is a document (like a research report, a leaflet, or an application form) that can be transferred from our website to your computer. You can download a file, view it on your screen, print it, or save it to your computer.
PDF stands for ‘portable document format’.
Most downloads on this website are PDFs. We use this format to ensure that the document looks the same on everyone’s computer (website pages, by contrast, appear differently depending on how people have got their computer set up).
Computers use a program called Adobe Acrobat Reader to download PDFs. If you try clicking on a link to download a PDF and it doesn’t work, you will need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader onto your computer.
The process is quite straightforward and is free.
PDFs cannot be changed. If you need to be able to type into a downloaded document (for example, if we are offering a letter template that you need to put your name on) we will provide it as a Microsoft Word document rather than a PDF. You can then download it, type into it and save it to your computer.
Downloads will open on your computer in a new browser window.
Inside this window (below all your web browser menus), there will be a toolbar with options for you to print or save the document.
Close the browser window to return to the Age UK website.
We have made every effort to make our PDFs accessible to screen readers. Here is an overview of your accessibility options available in Acrobat Reader. Please ensure that you have downloaded the latest version of Acrobat Reader from the Adobe Reader website to ensure that they are included in your version of the programme.You can use Adobe Reader to read a PDF out loud with the following shortcut keys:
You can also convert a PDF into a web page by following these steps:
You can convert a PDF document into a text file for use with other software and hardware such as Braille printers by opening the PDF and choosing ‘Save as text’ from the File menu.
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