Common Questions and Answers part 3

Two jobs
Q: I have just left university and I am currently working two part-time jobs at the moment. I’m doing one day a week at a pub, which should earn me about £2,500 a year and my other admin job pays about £5,000 a year. I’ve seen the stories in the press about the tax errors arising on people with multiple jobs and I want to avoid having this problem. Do you have any tips?
A: I imagine you’ve probably got a BR tax code on your job in the pub, which means you’re having 20% tax taken off your earnings. And a tax code of 747L on your admin job, which means you’re having your entire tax free amount of £7,475 (personal allowance) offset against your £5,000. You are therefore wasting £2,500 of your personal allowance.
I would recommend that you contact HM Revenue & Customs on 0845 300 0627. Make sure you have you have a payslip to hand for each job, so you know your national insurance number and your tax reference. You should ask them to split your personal allowance across your two jobs. This way, your tax codes will be 250L on your job at the pub and 497L on your admin job.
You should then find that you pay less tax overall, because you won’t be wasting any of your personal allowance.


Joint ownership of property
Q: My husband and I have only just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We have just bought an investment property together, which we plan to let. However, I am in a better paid job than my husband so I put up 70% of the purchase money. Right now, all our assets and income are kept pretty separate because we haven’t been married very long- so is there any way that we can apportion the rent from the house according to our investment?
A: If you live together with your spouse or civil partner, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will normally treat income from property held in your joint names as if it belonged to you in equal shares and tax each of you on half of the income, regardless of actual ownership.
However, if you actually own the property in unequal shares and are entitled to the income arising in proportion to those shares, then you have the right to be taxed on that basis.
You must simply complete HMRC form 17, which is available from their website www.hmrc.gov.uk. HMRC will expect to see some evidence to support your claim for the income apportionment.
It would be advisable to seek the advice from a solicitor on this, as there may be legal issues to consider.