§ Mr. Smallasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will review the arrangements for refunding excess national insurance contributions to employed earners with more than one job.
§ Mr. OrmeWhere an employee has more than one job with earnings above the lower earnings limit, and has neither obtained deferment of his liability to pay primary class 1 contributions on his subsidiary jobs nor paid in advance to my Department a sum equal to the annual maximum, each of his employers has to deduct contributions in the normal way. Any primary contributions paid above the annual maximum are refundable to the employee after the end of the contribution year.
My Department cannot refund excess contributions until it has evidence that they have been paid, and this is usually provided when the contributions are recorded in the individual's account at the Department's Central Office at Newcastle. This can only take place when the PAYE deduction cards in respect of the employments have been forwarded to Newcastle through collectors of taxes after the end of the tax year. This inevitably takes some time, particularly if any of the employers are late in submitting deduction cards to collectors of taxes, or submit incorrectly completed cards.
In order to reduce delay I am now arranging for excess payments to be refunded without waiting for the normal processes to be completed, to those contributors who submit alternative evidence—for example, completed P60 Forms—that contributions have in fact been paid in excess of the maximum. I am also arranging for suitable publicity to be given to this facility.