Maternity Pay (UK)

It will depend on your earnings for the financial year and usually pension contributions will decrease in line with your pay

Yes it’s taxable, guess it will get adjusted and you will get a rebate - if they take it. I’m hoping that as I will be on SMP in April they won’t take the tax 🙈 I’m not halting my pension contributions but work did say if I did I could talk to them about topping it up after i get back so that i don’t miss out. So assuming that means I would up contributions when I got back

I’m in the same boat! I believe you do pay tax on maternity, but it depends on how much you have earnt so far this tax year, if it’s above the £12,500 that we can earn untaxed. I rung hmrc and they said if I haven’t earnt enough yet, I’ll actually start getting some of the tax back each month instead of paying more! And yes I emailed my head office to freeze my pension contributions just to have a little more extra! £172 is nowhere near enough per week let alone with any non essential deductions!🤦🏻‍♀️ I believe depending on if you have a partner that you live with and depending on what they earn, we can claim universal credit to help us out! Something I will look at after my 6 weeks of 90%! Xx

Technically yes but depending on how much you’ve already earned you may get a rebate. I paid tax on the first few months but once it was calculated etc they realised I’d paid too much so then the following few months i got a little back each month

Depends on how much you’ve earned this financial year. I went on maternity leave in Oct last year and ended up receiving tax refund for a few months.

You will pay tax but how much depends on your earnings for the rest of the year, how long you’re taking leave for, if it straddles two tax years etc. If you pay more than necessary you’ll get a rebate the next tax year.

Make sure you’re also claiming child benefit - https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit

My maternity has just finished and I didn't pay any tax on it, you don't get enough on maternity to pay tax

@Katie depends on your earnings for the remainder of the year - you can still go over the tax threshold

SMP is taxed and it's based on your earnings for the year. Depending on when baby's due you may pay nothing at all. Maternity Allowance is not taxed.

So I go in maternity leave at the end of February. So March and April I will get almost 2 full payslips, So from April, there’s a possibility I may not be taxed anything then as I would not have earned £12,750 by April 24 when the new tax year comes into play. Or is that not how it works?

My understanding is - and I'm a bit rusty as it has been a while since I did this - your March salary will likely be taxed as normal. April will also be taxed as normal, however if your tax code is correct and you're being paid SMP via PAYE following payments will be adjusted accordingly to make up your tax free allowance. As you're expecting your April pay to be normal, you'll be taxed as normal and receive a rebate in later payslips.