What does the tax code
1271L mean?
1271L means £12,710 of tax-free pay. The £140 uplift matches an agreed HMRC flat rate expense for several specific trades, and it should be named on your coding notice.
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Get the detailed breakdown + free reclaim guideUnlike most codes above the standard, 1271L has a specific and checkable explanation. The uplift is £140, and £140 is an agreed flat rate expense in HMRC's published table for particular occupations. If you are a joiner, a carpenter, or a police officer up to the rank of chief inspector, this code is almost certainly your trade allowance showing up in your pay.
- 1271L Tax Code
- An ordinary L-suffix code giving £12,710 of tax-free pay for 2026/27, which is £140 above the standard allowance. The £140 corresponds to an agreed flat rate expense in HMRC's published table for uniforms, work clothing and tools, set at that figure for several specific trades.
Whose rate is £140
HMRC's flat rate expenses guidance publishes agreed amounts by industry and job, so that people with recurring, modest work costs do not have to keep receipts for years. Two entries sit at £140:
- Building trades: joiners and carpenters
- Police officers up to and including chief inspector
For comparison, healthcare nurses and therapists are set at £125, agriculture workers at £100, and airline pilots at £1,022. Where a job is not listed at all, the guidance says: "If your industry and job are not shown, you can claim a flat rate expense amount of £60", which is the figure behind the 1263L code.
Landing on 1271L therefore tells you something quite specific about your record. It is not a generic adjustment. If you are in neither of those groups and cannot account for £140 any other way, it is worth a look, because a rate applied to the wrong trade is a real, if small, error.
What the £140 is worth
The uplift is allowance, not cash. What you keep is the tax that would otherwise have been charged on it.
| Your marginal rate | Annual saving | Monthly saving | Four years backdated |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% basic rate | £28 | £2.33 | £112 |
| 40% higher rate | £56 | £4.67 | £224 |
The fourth column is the interesting one and the reason this page spends time on backdating rather than on the £2.33.
Worked example: 1271L on a £33,000 salary
A site joiner earning £33,000 whose trade allowance has been coded in.
- Gross salary: £33,000
- Subtract the 1271L allowance: £33,000 minus £12,710 = £20,290 of taxable income
- All of it sits within the basic rate band, which runs to £50,270, so it is taxed at 20%
- Income tax for the year: £4,058
- Monthly tax-free pay: £12,710 divided by 12 = £1,059.17
On the standard 1257L code the same salary produces £20,430 taxable and £4,086 of tax. The saving is £28 for the year. Income tax only, National Insurance excluded, and an estimate to confirm with HMRC.
Backdating is where the money is
A flat rate expense claim is not limited to the year you make it. The general time limit for a tax claim is four years from the end of the tax year concerned, which as at August 2026 means 2022/23 remains open until 5 April 2027.
If you have been a joiner for a decade and only claimed this year, four years of relief at £140 a year comes back as a single amount of roughly £112 at the basic rate. Your tax code does not do this for you. It fixes the current year and nothing else. Closed years need a separate claim, and our guide to reclaiming overpaid tax sets out how that works.
The same point applies to anyone who moved into a qualifying trade several years ago. The relief runs from when the cost started being incurred, not from when somebody noticed.
The choice you are making without realising
Accepting the flat rate means giving up the alternative, which is claiming what you actually spent.
For a joiner replacing hand tools regularly, £140 a year can be well short of the real figure. An evidenced claim has no fixed ceiling, but it requires records and it has to satisfy the test that the cost was incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in performing the duties of the job. Tools you also use at home fail that test. Tools your employer replaces fail it too, because you did not bear the cost.
The flat rate exists precisely so that most people never have to have this argument. It is worth checking your actual spending once, deciding which route fits, and then leaving it alone.
How the relief actually reaches your pay
The timing depends on when the claim was accepted, and the two cases look quite different on a payslip.
If the code was in place from April, the £140 is spread across the year. Your monthly tax-free pay is £1,059.17 instead of £1,047.50, and the £28 arrives as roughly £2.33 a month. Nobody notices, which is fine, because there is nothing to notice.
If the claim was accepted mid-year, the new code is applied cumulatively. Your employer recalculates the whole year from 6 April on the higher allowance, finds you have paid slightly too much, and refunds the difference in that payslip. A claim landing in month 9 produces a single payslip about £21 larger than usual and then normal ones after it.
That mechanism is worth understanding beyond this code, because it is the same one that returns much larger sums. It is why a corrected emergency code can produce a payslip more than a thousand pounds higher than usual, as our 1257L M1 page works through.
One limitation is constant across all of it: cumulative recalculation only ever reaches back to 6 April of the current tax year. It cannot touch a year that has already closed, however obviously the relief was due in it. That boundary is why the backdating section above is a separate exercise rather than something your employer can sort out.
When 1271L is wrong
You left the trade. The relief stays in your code until somebody removes it. Carrying it into a desk job means you are undertaxed by £28 a year and HMRC will reclaim it eventually.
Your employer took over the cost. If tools or uniform are now supplied and maintained by the employer, the basis for the claim has gone.
The rate does not match your job. £140 is specific. If your occupation has its own published rate, using the wrong one is an error in either direction.
Two employments both show a full allowance. This dwarfs everything else on the page. Two codes each giving roughly £12,700 tax free means the allowance is being counted twice, and the resulting underpayment runs into four figures. A second job should normally carry BR.
Fixing it
Open your Personal Tax Account at gov.uk/personal-tax-account and look at "Check your Income Tax". The breakdown lists the addition in pounds, so you can confirm it really is £140 and see what it is described as. You can report a change there, or call the Income Tax helpline on 0300 200 3300.
Our guide to checking your tax code covers where the code appears on each document, and the wrong tax code page covers building a case when HMRC's record disagrees with yours.
For a quick estimate of what your code should be, use our free tax code checker. It gives you a figure to take to HMRC rather than advice.
People also ask
- 1271L gives £12,710 of tax-free pay, £140 above the standard code
- £140 is the agreed flat rate for building trade joiners and carpenters and for police officers up to chief inspector
- The uplift is worth about £28 a year at the basic rate and £56 at the higher rate
- Backdating the same claim four years is worth around £112, and your code cannot do that for you
- The flat rate is an alternative to claiming actual costs, not an addition to it
- Relief stays in a code after you leave the trade, which leaves you undertaxed until HMRC reconciles
- Two employments both showing a full allowance is a far more expensive error than anything else here
Related tax codes: 1263L tax code | 1269L tax code | 1275L tax code | 1257L tax code | L tax code
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