USC woes

ipadzz

Not sure if this is a silly query or not, but I'm a bit shocked.

When I originally started my current job I was working as an unpaid intern for a summer in 2011. When I finished up, I returned to my old part-time job back home but was called a few weeks later with the offer of some contracted flexi-time work back up in Dublin.

I kept on the part-time job at home (as I still lived there and worked on weekends, commuting to Dublin for work on contracted weekdays). It was a bit messy as I didn't have a P45 to give to this second employer, but after numerous calls with the tax office and getting them the right information, all was fine and my P60 and P21 from 2011 was fine.

Last year (2012) I was still juggling both jobs, until April when my current employer offered me a longer contract and more hours. It's a much higher paid job. So I quit the PT job and just focused on the Dublin job and have been kept on since.

My query is, I input the info from my P60 into revenue online for 2012 and they came back to me a month or two ago to tell me my tax records were way off and that USC had not been taken out of my wages, to a sum of over €2000 that I now had to repay.

Any advice on if this seems correct, should I hassle my employee services team for an answer as to why this happened (I assume they are in charge of taking out USC before payment)?

should I just try to pay back the whole amount or let it be taken from my credits for the next 3 years (which Revenue said will happen automatically). If so, does that go back to the employer or directly to Revenue?

I'm a bit lost, so any help would be appreciated

wmpdd3

do you have all you payslipd from both jobs? Ask your employers first, just in case a mistake was made in their statement to the tax office. Your usc seems very high, check what rate they are charging you. Do you have a medical card?

ipadzz

Yes all payslips filed away. No medical card...

wmpdd3

Well if your payslips say you paid USC, I'd be on to you employers quickly.

If they don't then, I'd say you have to repay what you owe. They dont accept lack of knowledge.

I was caught out like this too when I had 2 jobs, They reduced my tax credits over 5 years as I owed so much money. My payslips said no tax deducted for the first 3 months, I just presumed they would take more tax during the year. They don't.

I carried a watermelon

I would say that the problem happened while you moved from part-time to full-time work. More than likely you had the USC exemption on your tax cert when you were working part-time but you never contacted Revenue when you changed to fulltime, so the USC exemption remained in error.