A P45 is the form your employer must give you when you leave a job. It records your leaving date, your total pay and tax from 6 April to the date you left, and your tax code, along with your National Insurance number. You give it to your next employer so they can carry on taxing you correctly from where your last employer stopped. The legal duty is in regulation 36 of the Income Tax (PAYE) Regulations 2003. The employer must give the form on the day the employment ends or, if that is not practicable, "without unreasonable delay". A lost P45 cannot be replaced.
What P45 means
"P45" is simply HMRC's form number for the certificate of leaving. It exists because PAYE is cumulative. Your tax code gives you a share of your tax-free allowance for each week or month of the tax year, and the P45 tells your next employer how much pay and tax have already gone through. With it, the new payroll can pick up the cumulative position and deduct the right amount. Without it, the new employer has to estimate, and you may pay the wrong amount of tax until HMRC catches up.
You get a P45 only as an employee, and only when you stop working for an employer. If you are still employed at the end of the tax year on 5 April, you get a P60 instead.
The parts of a P45
A paper P45 comes in parts:
- Part 1A. Your copy. Keep it. It is your record of pay and tax for the year to date and is useful for a tax return or refund claim;
- Parts 2 and 3. Give these to your new employer. They take your previous pay, tax, tax code, student loan status and leaving date from them;
- Part 1. Under real-time PAYE, most employers no longer send this to HMRC, because the leaving date goes on the payroll submission. Regulation 36 now requires Part 1 to be sent only by employers outside real-time reporting, or those HMRC has specifically told to send it.
The details are set out in Table 2 of regulation 36. Every part shows the employer's PAYE reference, your name and National Insurance number (if known), your leaving date and your latest tax code, and whether that code was operated on the cumulative basis. Where it was, the form also shows the last tax week or month of pay and the total pay and tax to date. Part 1A also shows the employer's name and address and the date the form was completed.
What to do with your P45
- Starting a new job. Give Parts 2 and 3 to the new employer as early as you can, ideally before your first payday;
- Claiming benefits. If you are not working and are claiming taxable benefits, give your P45 to Jobcentre Plus;
- Not starting work. Keep it. If you have overpaid tax because you left part-way through the year, the figures on Part 1A support a refund claim;
- Two P45s. If you hand a new employer two P45s, they use the one with the latest date and give the other back.
No P45, lost P45 or wrong P45
If your former employer has not given you a P45, ask for it. They are legally required to provide it. If you have lost it, or the employer says it was sent and you never received it, you cannot get a replacement. Instead, you complete HMRC's starter checklist (the form that replaced the old P46) for your new employer. The same checklist is used for a first job or a second job alongside an existing one. If you need the figures for another reason, your HMRC personal tax account and the HMRC app show pay and tax details for the last 5 tax years.
If the pay or tax figures are wrong, ask your former employer for an amended P45. If you cannot get one, report it to HMRC through its online income tax service, and HMRC will contact the employer. If only the tax code is wrong, give the P45 to your new employer anyway. HMRC should correct the code automatically after your first pay.
The employer's side: leavers and late payments
For employers, the P45 sits alongside the real-time submission:
- Report the leaving date. Put it on the employee's payroll record when you pay them for the last time, and it goes to HMRC on the next Full Payment Submission;
- Issue the P45. On the last day, or without unreasonable delay. Employers exempt from online filing can order paper P45s from HMRC;
- Payments after the P45. Any later payment, such as a late bonus, accrued holiday pay or a taxable redundancy payment over £30,000, is taxed using code 0T on a week 1 or month 1 basis (S0T or C0T for Scottish or Welsh taxpayers). Regulation 37 requires this non-cumulative basis. You must not issue a second P45; instead, give the employee written confirmation of the gross payment and the deductions;
- Retirement with a pension from the same employer. This is not a leaving for P45 purposes. The person stays on the payroll under a new payroll ID;
- Statutory pay after leaving. Statutory maternity, paternity or adoption pay continues until the end of the statutory leave even if the employee stops working for you. Agree with the employee whether the P45 is issued now (with the remaining payments taxed on 0T week 1/month 1) or after the final payment.
New employers must keep the P45 information in their payroll records for the current year and the 3 following tax years. Our guide to tax codes explains how the code on the P45 is used.
The rules here come from regulation 36 of the PAYE Regulations and HMRC's guidance on what to do when an employee leaves. Acumon handles starters, leavers and post-leaving payments as part of payroll management and PAYE services.