I thought all the issues with my payroll had been resolved, but I found out on Friday that none of them have been. At the start of February I was paid the difference between what I was owed in backpay and what I owed in pension contributions from since September. However, on the most recent payday, that "correction" money was taken out of my pay as a salary advance, rather than a correction. I called up the company who has taken over doing our payroll (because the guy doing it before is obviously incompetent). They said that this guy who I talked to had never put the corrections into the computer or informed them about them, so it was just treated like a pay advance.

In addition extra tax was withheld from my account this month for unknown reasons. At the beginning of February I got a note from the Inland Revenue saying they had changed my tax code to a flat 22% withdrawal rate, meaning they thought I wasn't entitled to the standard deduction. When I called them up about it, they said somehow my job at Sheffield Hallam became set as my second job. When I asked what was down as my first job, they said there wasn't one. This confused me a bit as how can you have a second job without a first one? Normally the first one is the one they allow you to take deductions from, so they had switched me to a flat rate since in my non-existent first job I was supposed to get the deductions. Anyway, they switched me back, but not before the payroll had been already processed. They should credit me the tax money in the March payroll.

The tax system is set up a little differently than in the U.S. Normally in the U.S. you can say what you think your exemptions should be, and then they withhold an amount of money from your account based on that. However, the U.S. system has a hard time coping with you changing salaries. In a new job they never take any notice of how much tax you have previously paid, resulting in many people underpaying or overpaying.

In the U.K., the system is designed better, but implemented poorly. In the U.K., when you leave an employer, they fill out a form saying how much tax has been paid for you so far, to allow the new employer to adjust your tax withholding rate. However, instead of giving that information to the Inland Revenue, they are supposed to give it to the employee, who has responsibility for turning it in with the new employer (who never seems to ask for it). If you don't turn one in when you start a new job, the Inland Revenue automatically assumes this is a new second job, and starts taxing you at the top rate. It seems like the best solution would be for the Inland Revenue to just be notified by employers when people terminate work at their companies. Then they could keep track of how much money they have received from each employee and tell any new employers what to take out.

Anyway, the result of all of these mishaps is that I have gotten much less pay than expected in February. Luckily they have given me the salary advance on the correction to push me forward to next month. I am hoping to sort out all the pension and tax before April, which is the start of the new tax year. (U.K. tax years run April 1 to March 31). Not getting it sorted by then will doubtless mean many more forms to fill out.