The Salary Calculator

Student Loan over-repayment

by Admin

As you might have heard on the news or read in this article, £15 million has been overpaid this year by former students repaying their student loan – because the repayments have continued to be taken even after the full amount of the loan has been paid back.

The problem occurs because although the Student Loans Company (SLC) has informed your employer through HMRC that you should have student loan deducted from your payslip each month, the SLC doesn’t know how much is being repaid until the end of the tax year when your employer files its tax return. As you’ll see on the About page of The Salary Calculator, student loans are repaid at a fixed rate of 9% of anything you earn over £15,000 – no matter how large (or small) the balance of the loan. If you are close to repaying the total of your loan, deductions may continue for some time until the SLC realise that you have overpaid – and even then, they have to communicate to HMRC who then pass the “stop” message on to your employer.

There are things you can do to help prevent overpayment, however. The Student Loan Repayment Portal (which appears currently to be unavailable) will show the last known balance of your account, and allows you to enter information from your payslips to estimate how much is outstanding. If you are close to repaying the full amount, you can contact the SLC directly and pay off the remaining balance by debit card over the phone. When you do this you will need to make sure that the stop notice makes its way from the SLC through HMRC to your employer – if not, you will find the deductions continue to be taken even though you have repaid the loan. You may be able to get the SLC to fax confirmation of the stop directly to your employer, making sure it arrives in time for your next payslip – if you speak to the SLC about repaying your loan, you can ask them about this and discuss it with your employer.

Alternatively, you can arrange for your remaining balance to be taken by Direct Debit rather than by PAYE deduction – meaning that when the balance has been repaid in full, the debits stop automatically. Again, the SLC need to send a “stop” note to HMRC and your employer, but this happens before the amount is repaid and therefore if something goes wrong you are less likely to be trying to get a refund.

If you are repaying your student loan and you think this may apply to you, check out the Repayment Portal I linked to above and see how much is still outstanding on your loan. I repaid my loan earlier this year and I can tell you it is a good feeling!

Tags: debt, Loans, overpayment, Pay As You Earn, SLC, student loan company, student loans, The Salary Calculator

Emergency Budget Update

by Admin

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer gave the coalition government’s first Budget today, within 50 days of the election as promised. There were a great many changes, most of which will take place from April 2011, so I have added a new row to The Salary Calculator to give an indication of what the impact might be.

Unfortunately, a lot of the figures won’t be confirmed until towards the end of this year, so I have had to make some estimates based on what was described in the Emergency Budget report. For those who want to know, details of the figures I’ve used are below. For those who don’t – you can go straight to the “April 2011” row of the Salary Calculator for April 2011 values.

Another change announced in the Budget was an increase in standard VAT rate from 17.5% to 20% effective from 4th January 2011. The VAT Calculator has also been updated so you can see what a difference this will make to purchases.

The calculations for the April 2011 values in The Salary Calculator are based on the following assumptions. Under 65 personal allowance increased to £7,475, over 65 allowance increased to £9,940, over 75 allowance increased to £10,090. Threshold of 40% tax lowered to £35,000 from £37,400. National Insurance rates increase from 11% to 12% for basic and 1% to 2% for additional, as set out by the previous government’s budget. National Insurance basic rate threshold increased to £7,475, additional rate lowered to £42,875. All other values unchanged.

Edit (5th January 2011): The values above have been updated with the latest information from the Treasury and the April 2011 calculations have been updated in line with these. The Salary Calculator will be updated again with final values in early Spring 2011, following the budget update.

Tags: 20% VAT, April 2011, budget, coalition budget, Economy, election, emergency budget, HMRC, income tax, June 2010 budget, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, personal allowance, tax rates, The Salary Calculator, VAT

The Salary Calculator goes mobile!

by Admin

The mobile version of The Salary Calculator has been launched – a smaller version of the take home pay calculator, suitable for smart phones (and hopefully some older phones too) is now available – The Salary Calculator Mobile.

Store this link in your phone for when you need to check calculations and you’re not near a computer or you only have mobile internet. It’s been designed to fit easily onto a mobile screen and be quicker to download than the normal site. If you have any problems or find that it is not displaying correctly on your phone I would be very interested to know the details – please email with details of the phone you are using and the problem you are having.

Tags: cell phone, income tax, mobile, mobile salary calculator, mobile site, mobile tax calculator, Pay As You Earn, The Salary Calculator

Coalition pledges to affect tax

by Admin

So we’ve got a new, coalition government and they have published the details of the agreements which were reached between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. As you can see in the linked article, campaign pledges from both parties were included in the agreement, reflecting the compromises necessary.

They have promised that a new budget will be announced within 50 days, which will include changes to PAYE taking effect from April 2011. These changes will include increasing the income tax personal allowance to reduce taxes for low and middle earners (although not immediately the full increase to £10,000 the Lib Dems wanted), but the employee National Insurance threshold changes the Conservatives put in their manifesto will not be included. However Labour’s planned increase in employer National Insurance will not go ahead, pleasing Conservative supporters.

Full details will not be available until the promised emergency budget, but I promise to make available as soon as possible any relevant changes to The Salary Calculator!

Tags: April 2011, budget, Economy, election, HMRC, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, personal allowance, recession, recovery, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

Election come down

by Admin

So after all the hype and canvassing and the debates, the results are in – and it’s a hung Parliament, the first since 1974. What does that mean for your money? Well, first of all, the pound has fallen against other currencies – 4 cents against the dollar and 3 cents against the Euro – bad news if you were about to go on holiday!

Why is this? In short because the value of a currency is related to how confident investors are in a country’s economy. Historically, hung parliaments in Britain are unable to act as swiftly as majority governments, because consensus must be found by the members of coalition parties – who often disagree on certain principles. These delays in acting may hinder our recovery from the recession – so investors would rather not be holding on to the pound. Of course, if it does lead to a slow recovery (or even the “double dip” recession some analysts have been predicting), then this could continue to hit us in the wallet for months to come – with the effects of the recession continuing rather than abating.

Another area that was to be decided by this election was income tax and National Insurance. As I wrote previously, all the parties had set out in their manifestos their intended changes to the PAYE system. I put these all in the Election Comparison Calculator – which shows you want impact these differences would have on you. With no party yet in charge, it’s not clear what will happen about this – whose policies will be enacted? The Conservatives, who have the largest number of seats, said they would hold an emergency budget to implement some of their changes before next year. We’ll have to wait and see to find out what really happens.

Tags: Economy, election, euro, Foreign Currency, foreign exchange rates, holiday, holiday money, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, personal allowance, pound, recession, recovery, tax rates, The Salary Calculator, unemployment