Tax question for PAYE new employee

[Uncool]

Hi there,

I'm normally pretty good at this stuff but can't get my head around this.

My wife has started a new job at a sandwich chain, starting in the last week of September. She's just got paid her first month and consequently has her first pay slip.

When she started she confirmed to them that this is her first and only job of the current tax year (so she had no P45 too), and indeed her first PAYE job here at all (Brazilian national, recently married etc). She got her NI number which is correctly applied.

Looking at her payslip her tax code is being correctly applied (1185L) which is the full personal allowance for the year. However, the full code is 1185L M1 which suggests she's being paid on a Month 1 basis, and consequently has paid some tax, despite the payslip acknowledging is the pay slip for Month 7 (October).

It's barely above minimum wage which means that by April 2019 she won't have earnt enough to even pay tax at all in that 6 months.

It's the M1 part I'm struggling with. Does she need to talk to her employer to say 'I'm reiterating this is my first and only job of this tax year' and get them to correct it, or does she need to talk to the tax office to get them to 'correct' the code? (That's a second question - how would she ever know which is her tax office? I guess she'll be getting a coding notice through the post imminently?)

Thanks for any replies!

[Eric Mc]

Yes - she needs to talk to her employer as to why she is on a Month 1 basis. If they say "That's what HMRC told us", she will need to speak to HMRC.

It's not unusual for a person starting a new job past the mid point of a tax year to be put on a M1 basis.

[Uncool]

Thanks Eric, that's useful. I'll get on to it.