The short answer is probably because you didn’t pay enough tax to trigger one. A rebate is only due when you’ve overpaid tax.
If you’re in construction, that might be as a result of CIS deductions throughout the year. But if you were paid mostly through PAYE, that will probably have accounted for your personal allowance – so your rebate might be low or non-existent.
Why might you have paid too much tax?
You might have paid too much tax if:
- you started a new job and had an emergency tax code for a while
- your employer was using the wrong tax code
- you only had a job for part of the tax year
- you had more than one job at the same time
- you are a student and you only worked during the holidays
- other income that HMRC taxes through your tax code has reduced
- you stopped working and had no taxable earnings or benefits for the rest of the tax year
- your circumstances changed – for example, you changed from full-time to part-time work.
It’s worth discussing these with a professional if you’re unsure whether they do apply to you or not. It’s easy to get confused, and in our experience, it’s not worth the risk, especially if you think you may have paid too much.
What do I do if I have paid too much?
If you do think that the above applies to you and you’ve paid too much tax, then you’ll need to get in touch with HMRC to make a claim.
This will need to be done before the end of the tax year and can be completed online via a Personal Tax account.
You’ll need to make sure you have the following details to hand:
- your personal details – such as your full name, address, date of birth and National Insurance number
- details of each of your employers or pension providers – their PAYE scheme reference number (this should be shown on your payslip, or ask your employer or pension provider for it)
- estimates of your earnings and/or pensions from each source for the current tax year.
If you chose to call over the phone instead, we’d always advise keeping a note of who you spoke to and what time the call was made.
I’ve submitted a claim, but still have not had my rebate
Due to the current UK financial climate, there might be a few reasons why you’re not getting your tax rebate as quickly as you may have done 2 years ago.
HMRC is still playing catch up off the back of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, which severely hit their response times.
Understaffing and lack of resources almost doubled the time to action a call in February 2021.
While things are slowly returning to normal, the sheer number of enquiries due to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and additional Universal Credit payments, to name a few, has left HMRC playing catchup.
The usual deadline of eight to ten weeks simply hasn’t been the case, and this has meant a significant backlog has appeared.
So, we’d say be patient and wait as long as you can before you chase them up.
Need some advice?
Get in touch with us today – we’ll be more than happy to discuss anything to do with rebates and how it affects you and your finances.