Hey. Nobody gets excited about a P60. But this issue is basically a treasure map: three documents you’ve probably shoved in a drawer that could be quietly holding onto your money.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• The first payslip checklist nobody hands you at your leaving do
• P60 vs P45, and why mixing them up gets expensive
• The four-year window to claim back tax HMRC already owes you

Your induction covered the fire exits and the coffee machine. It did not cover your tax code. Four things are worth checking on that first payslip, before the excitement of a real salary wears off and you stop looking at it altogether.

Check your tax code first. New starters get emergency codes more than anyone; HMRC often hasn’t caught up with your employment history yet. Ends in W1, M1 or X instead of the standard L? Flag it, don’t wait for it to fix itself.

Check your student loan deduction has actually started, on the right plan. Confirm auto enrolment has happened and your gross salary matches your offer letter. New job payroll errors happen more than you’d expect, purely from the sheer amount of new setup involved.

Takeaway: Your first payslip is the one most worth reading properly. Errors here run the longest before anyone notices.

Try the Pay Slip Decoder (https://shop.personalledger.co.uk/l/payslip-decoder), translation for a document that was clearly never written with you in mind.

A P60 shows up every May if you're still in the job. A P45 shows up when you leave one. Mix them up, and you're the person frantically searching a drawer while HMRC or a new employer waits for the one you don't have.

Keep every P60 for at least four years; mortgage applications love asking for them out of nowhere. A P45 matters most in the weeks right after leaving a job; hand it to your new employer fast, or you risk landing on an emergency tax code until HMRC untangles the gap, which usually means overpaying tax in the meantime.

Takeaway: Just started somewhere new and never handed over a P45? Chase it down. An uncorrected emergency code is a quiet, avoidable overpayment.

Four years. That's how far back you can claim an overpaid tax refund, and most people who changed jobs or sat on an emergency code somewhere in that window have never actually checked whether HMRC owes them anything.

Usual suspects: starting a job partway through the tax year and being taxed as if it were your only income from month one, an emergency code that nobody corrected, or a second job taxed at the basic rate with unused allowance sitting elsewhere. HMRC sometimes catches this automatically and sends a P800 letter. Sometimes it doesn't.

Takeaway: Changed jobs in the last few years? Your Personal Tax Account on gov.uk takes ten minutes to check and could be worth real money.

The Pay Slip Decoder (https://shop.personalledger.co.uk/l/payslip-decoder) checks your current payslip against what you should actually be paying, so this month's overpayment gets caught this month.

✅ This issue's checklist

🛠️ From this issue