Employment and taxes in Great Britain

If we, together with many other Poles and people of different nationalities get interested in emigration to Great Britain, then we surely realize that we are involved in tax payments. Even more if we are concerned with working in the UK – if we are employed, then our employer deals with taxes using the PAYE system – Pay As You Earn, which means exactly what the letters stand for. Income tax is in this way paid by the employer. It is she/he who pays the National Insurance contributions – thanks to that we do not have to take care of these things ourselves and these amounts are automatically taken off our earnings.
In Great Britain, just like in Poland there are notions of post-tax and pre-tax. Before paying taxes and insurance contributions we have pre-tax salary, called gross salary and after setting every payment off we have post-tax salary, called net salary. After every payoff of our salary we receive so-called payslip, an installment of the money, which provides us with information regarding our pre-tax earnings with all bonuses, tax amount, contributions’ amount, student loan contributions – if we have one. On the payslip there is also our money in form of take home pay – post-tax amount we really get.
Taxes to payment of which we are obliged cover also business trips, fuel or medical insurance.
Tax in Great Britain works in the same way the income tax works all around the world – covers the expenses of education, healthcare, communication and of many other important issues, necessary for country’s functionality. So it is our input into a budget of a country we live in and it is dependent on how much we can earn. HM Revenue & Customs, amongst many other issues, deals with assigning of tax codes that are visible on payslips and will allow us to calculate the tax. Every tax year finishes with employer handing in to employee special P60 form, an end-of-the-year summary of pre-tax earnings and the amount of tax paid.
We also need to remember about social security – with National Insurance contributions paid we get access to social services. Their amount is related to our earnings – it may be influenced too by us being a widow/widower, wife/husband or a senior citizen.
We should remember to keep in mind these issues – if after getting to Great Britain we do not know how to cope with these problems then we use the assistance of our compatriots or turn to institutions that are sure to provide us with much needed help. We need to take care of this, because legal and administration regulations are immensely crucial and are our duty no matter the work place.