What Is a P60? End-of-Year Tax Certificate Explained

Every 31 May, millions of UK employees should have received a P60 from their employer for the tax year just ended. Miss that document, misread it, or confuse it with a P45, and you could miss a tax refund, fail a mortgage application, or overclaim a benefit. The stakes are quietly high for a single sheet of paper.

What Does a P60 Actually Show?

Strip away the HMRC formatting and a P60 contains four core figures: your total gross pay for the year, the income tax deducted under PAYE (Pay As You Earn), your employee National Insurance contributions, and your final tax code for the year. Some versions also show statutory pay (sick pay, maternity pay) and student loan deductions if they apply.

The gross pay figure is the headline. For the 2025/26 tax year (6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026), a P60 covering that year will arrive by 31 May 2026.

A P60 Versus a P45: Not the Same Thing

The confusion between these two documents trips up a lot of people. A P45 is issued when you leave a job; it covers your pay and tax from the start of that tax year to your leaving date. A P60 is issued while you are still employed, covering the full tax year. If you changed jobs mid-year and never got a P45 from your old employer, that gap will show up on your new employer's P60, and your tax code may be wrong as a result. It is worth checking your tax code after any job change to catch errors before they compound.

Worked Example: Reading Your P60 Figures

Say you are a salaried employee earning £38,000 in 2025/26. Here is roughly what the key lines on your P60 should show:

The tax figure comes from applying 20% to the £25,430 that falls within the basic-rate band after your £12,570 Personal Allowance. If your P60 shows significantly more or less tax than this, it is worth using the salary tax calculator to model whether you are owed a refund or face an underpayment. Small discrepancies are common after periods of sick leave, bonus payments or a mid-year tax code change.

If you have more than one job

Your primary employer (where your full Personal Allowance sits) issues one P60. Your secondary employer issues another. The second job will almost certainly show tax deducted at 20% or 40% from the first pound, because there is no allowance left to offset. Do not total the two gross pay figures and assume you have been taxed correctly overall; the interaction between the two employments can easily create an underpayment that HMRC collects the following year.

Why You Actually Need to Keep Your P60

Your P60 is not just a filing-cabinet curiosity. Here are the situations where people discover they needed one:

• Mortgage applications: Most lenders ask for P60s from the last two or three years as proof of income, especially for employed applicants.
• Tax refund claims: If you believe you overpaid tax, HMRC can correct this going back four tax years. Your P60s are the evidence.
• Universal Credit and other benefits: The P60 is routinely used to verify earned income.
• Self-employed records (if you have a side job): If you are also self-employed alongside PAYE employment, the gross pay on your P60 feeds directly into your Self Assessment return.

Lost your P60? Your employer is legally obliged to give you a copy or a substitute document showing the same information. HMRC will not send you one directly, but their online Personal Tax Account shows your employment history and can act as a fallback.

P60s and Self-Employed People

Sole traders and freelancers working entirely through Self Assessment do not receive a P60 because nobody is running PAYE on their behalf. Their equivalent is their SA302 (the tax calculation summary HMRC produces from their Self Assessment return), which mortgage lenders accept in place of a P60. If you have moved from employment to self-employment during the year, the P60 from your last employer covers the employed portion; the rest lives in your tax return.

What to Do If Your P60 Looks Wrong

Start with your tax code, shown in the bottom-right area of the certificate. A wrong code is the most common reason the tax figure looks off. The PAYE system applies your tax code automatically throughout the year, so an error set in April compounds across every payslip. Once you have verified the code, cross-check the gross pay total against your last payslip of the year, which should carry a running year-to-date total. If the numbers still do not reconcile, contact your payroll department first; they can issue a corrected P60. If the underpayment or overpayment is already with HMRC (you will get a P800 letter if so), you can respond online through your Personal Tax Account.