How Much Tax Have I Paid? Find It on Your P60, Payslip or HMRC App

The exact amount of income tax you paid in a completed tax year is printed on your P60, in the box marked "Tax deducted" next to your total pay. For the tax year you are in now, look at the "tax to date" or year-to-date column on your most recent payslip, or open the HMRC app and check your PAYE income tax record. Both figures cover income tax only — National Insurance is shown separately.

• A UK tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April, so every "to date" figure resets in April.
• Your employer must give you a P60 by 31 May after the tax year ends.
• The HMRC app and your Personal Tax Account show pay and tax for the current year and several earlier years.
• A wrong tax code is the most common reason the number is too high or too low.
• You can usually reclaim overpaid PAYE tax for up to four years after the end of the tax year.

Where each figure lives

On your P60

Your P60 is the end-of-year summary of everything your employer paid you and everything they deducted. Employers must give one to every employee still on the payroll on 5 April, by 31 May at the latest. It can be paper or digital — a payslip portal download counts.

The section you want is headed "Pay and Income Tax details". It has two lines:

• In previous employment(s) — pay and tax from earlier jobs in the same tax year, carried over from your P45.
• In this employment — what this employer paid and deducted.

The total tax on your P60 is the two added together, shown on the "Total for year" line. That single figure is your income tax for the year. If you had two jobs at the same time, each employer issues its own P60 and neither total is the whole picture — add them up.

National Insurance appears further down, broken into earnings bands rather than a single cash total, and student loan deductions sit in their own box. Neither is income tax, so do not include them when someone asks how much tax you paid.

No P60?

You will not get one if you left the job before 5 April — your P45 carries the figures instead. If you have lost both, your employer can give you a statement of earnings, and the HMRC app shows the same pay and tax data HMRC received under Real Time Information.

On your payslip

Payslips usually carry two tax numbers. "Tax this period" is what came out of this month's or week's pay. "Tax to date" (sometimes in a separate year-to-date block) is the running total since 6 April. That cumulative figure is the answer to "how much tax have I paid this year" at any point mid-year.

Two things to watch. First, the to-date column may include pay and tax from a previous job this tax year if you handed in a P45 — which is what you want, but it means the figure is bigger than what this employer has deducted. Second, if your code ends in W1, M1 or X, each payday is taxed in isolation and the cumulative total is not being used to smooth things out, which often means too much tax.

In the HMRC app

The HMRC app and the online Personal Tax Account draw on the same record. Sign in with your Government Gateway details and open the PAYE or income tax section. You can see:

• your current tax code and what it is made up of;
• an estimate of your pay and tax for the tax year you are in;
• the pay and tax each employer has reported, payday by payday;
• earlier tax years, so you can answer "how much income tax did I pay last year" without digging out the P60.

You can download the app from GOV.UK or sign in at your Personal Tax Account. Remember the current-year number is an estimate built from your code and earnings so far, not a final bill. It only becomes final after the tax year ends and HMRC reconciles the year.

Was it the right amount?

PAYE is a good system, but it is only as accurate as the tax code behind it. Here is the arithmetic to sanity-check a full year on a single salary with a standard code.

Worked example: £40,000 salary, England, Wales or Northern Ireland

1. Personal Allowance: £12,570 tax-free.
2. Taxable income: £40,000 − £12,570 = £27,430.
3. All of that sits inside the basic-rate band (the first £37,700 of taxable income), so tax is £27,430 × 20% = £5,486.

If your P60 says roughly £5,486 of tax deducted on £40,000 of pay, the year has worked out correctly. For context, National Insurance on the same salary is 8% of the slice between £12,570 and £50,270: £27,430 × 8% = £2,194.40.

The same salary in Scotland

Scottish rates apply to non-savings income such as wages. On £27,430 of taxable pay:

• starter rate 19% on the first £3,967 = £753.73
• basic rate 20% on the next £12,989 = £2,597.80
• intermediate rate 21% on the remaining £10,474 = £2,199.54

Total: £5,551.07, about £65 more than the rest of the UK. A Scottish taxpayer's code starts with S — if yours does not and you live in Scotland, the figure on your P60 will be wrong.

Mid-year check

PAYE spreads the Personal Allowance evenly. By the end of month 6 (September) on a £40,000 salary you should have been paid £20,000 and used half your allowance (£6,285), giving taxable pay of £13,715 and tax to date of £2,743. If your payslip shows materially more, the code is the place to look.

Common reasons the number is off

• An emergency or month-1 code after starting a new job.
• Leaving work part-way through the year, so you never used the rest of your allowance.
• Two jobs or a pension, with the allowance applied twice or not at all.
• A company car, medical cover or old underpayment coded out when it should not be.
• Work expenses, uniform costs or higher-rate pension relief never claimed, which reduce tax rather than showing up as an error.
• A large bonus taxed as though it repeats every month (this usually corrects itself by April).

After the tax year ends, HMRC reconciles PAYE records and issues a P800 or simple assessment where the sums do not match — typically between June and November. You do not have to wait for it: you can ask HMRC to review a year yourself, and claims normally run back four tax years. Start at GOV.UK's tax refund service if you already know a year is wrong.

If you file Self Assessment

Self-employed profits, rental income and untaxed side income are not on a P60 at all. Your tax for the year is on the tax calculation (SA302) produced when you file, and payments you have made show in the account section of your HMRC online services. If you also have a job, the PAYE tax on your P60 is credited against the total, so the bill you pay in January is the shortfall, not the whole year's tax.

What to do next

Take the total pay and total tax from your P60 and run them through the P60 end-of-year tax calculator — it recalculates what the year should have cost and flags a gap in either direction. If it shows you paid too much, the check if HMRC owes you money tool walks through which years are still in time to claim. For a straight estimate of tax on a given salary, use the income tax calculator.