Most Britons Never File a Tax Return — Epoche B1
Most people in Britain never fill in a tax return. Income tax is taken out of the wage before it reaches the worker, by the employer, under a system called PAYE — Pay As You Earn — which has run since 1944. The machinery is a code. Every employee has a tax code printed on the payslip — 1257L is the common one — and it tells the employer how much of the year's pay is free of tax. The employer applies the code every payday, sends the money straight to HM Revenue and Customs, and at the end of the tax year hands over a single form, the P60, summarising what was earned and what was taken. For most workers that is the whole of their dealings with the tax office. That is what the system buys: no forms, no deadline, no accountant. It also collects earlier than a system that waits for a return, because the money arrives month by month rather than once a year. The cost is hidden in the same design. If the code is wrong, the wrong amount is taken, and nothing announces it. Start a job without the form from your last employer and you may be put on an emergency code. Take a second job, or a company car, and the code shifts. The wage simply arrives a little smaller, or a little larger, for months — and it is the worker, not the employer, who is expected to notice. Visitors sometimes read the absence of tax returns as a sign that Britain is relaxed about collecting. It is the reverse. The state has already done the arithmetic, and it has quietly moved the job of checking it onto the person least likely to look. References HM Revenue and Customs (2024). PAYE and payroll for employers: introduction to PAYE. GOV.UK. Parliament of the United Kingdom (2003). Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003. The Stationery Office.