[consp]

You employer doesn't know your deductibles in the Netherlands due to privacy concerns (and other rules as well), which you definitely want to file in most cases since you pay less money or get some back. You are also responsible for your taxes, if the employer screws up you should check it. This is probably different from the UK. It is not a "can't do" but more or less a "won't do".

edit: so it's not that different, just a different method of doing so. Good to know.

[pmyteh]

You tell the tax office of any unusual deductibles, and they give your employers a 'tax code' which tells them how much allowance to give you (but critically not why, to better protect your privacy).

Even this isn't needed in most cases; things are either done employer side (paid from pre-tax income, like pensions) or directly by the government (basic rate tax is semi-automatically added to charitable donations, so only higher rate taxpayers need to declare it, and they all fill in a short return anyway).

[maccard]

Your employer doesn't need to know what your deductibles are (also the deductibles are much more limited here). If you, for example, make a large one off pension contribution, HMRC will adjust your tax code, which your employer will just apply to your payroll.

[wdb]

I wouldn't know what I would be able to get tax relief for as an employee. What kind of deductibles?

Guess, I could claim that £6 per week for Covid work from home stuff. Wish you could claim the cost of repairing your bike, or public transport costs.

[maccard]

Most of the big ones can be done without a self assessment. If you make a pension contribution for example, you can call hmrc and tell them and they'll adjust your tax code

[RHSeeger]

Doesn't that more or less equate to doing your taxes, just in little updates for each thing, rather than one big update at the end of the year?

[maccard]

Not at all. The list of things you can claim for is very limited, and the majority of them are automatically applied. Having to actually contact HMRC is a rarity. If you are salaried employee with no extra cash coming in, you don't need to do anything.

Another example of how the system works - if you are working two jobs, both as a regular employee, HRMC will instruct your employer as to what your tax deduction should be for that paycheck to make sure that things are balanced. For <some large number>% of people, this will be correct, and if it's not, it will rectify itself over 2 or 3 pay periods. If that's _still_ not enough, a phone call to HMRC (usually taking less than 10 minuts for the two times in a decade I've had to do it) will resolve the issue in your next check.

[ZeroGravitas]

You can claim those, if you use the transport as part of your work but notably not for travelling to and from work, 20p per mile for the bike.

[ridiculous_fish]

Charitable contributions? How are those treated?

[billpg]

If I want to give (say) £100 to a charity, I give £75 and sign something agreeing to allow the charity to get the rest from the income taxes I already paid.

(I forget the exact percentage.)

[joshuaissac]

Those are claimed by the recipient under a programme called Gift Aid.

[ridiculous_fish]

Do I understand correctly that charities report contributions to the government, which then adjusts the taxes due from the donors? That seems like a good system.

[joshuaissac]

The tax relief goes to the charity itself, rather than the donor. They can claim a top-up of up to 25% of your donation from the government, as long as the total amount claimed by all donation recipients does not exceed the total annual income tax paid by the donor. So if you donate £100 and fill out a declaration saying that you 'Gift Aid' that donation, the charity can claim an additional £25 from the government, as long as you paid at least £25 in income taxes that financial year.

[oarsinsync]

Note that if you're paying in the 40% and/or 45% income tax brackets, the charity doesn't know about that, and still only gets the 25% topup (equivalent to the 20% income tax most people pay).

You can either:

* Gift that remaining amount to HMRC by doing nothing (it will not go to the charity)

* Claim it back (I don't know any other way to do this other than filing a self assessment)

[chrisseaton]

> The tax relief goes to the charity itself, rather than the donor.

Half goes to the charity, and half to the donor.

[chrisseaton]

Right they can claim 25% but you can also claim another 20% back!

[philjohn]

We can deduct far less than you can in the Netherlands - mortgage interest for example is deductible for you, but not in the UK.

Someone on PAYE will have most of the deductibles handled by their employer (pension, any salary sacrifice schemes etc).

[teh_klev]

In the UK, deductibles on mortgage interest payments (known as MIRAS[0]) was abolished for private home owners in 2000. As a renter this kind of always stuck in my craw that homeowners got this preferential treatment and was quite glad it was abolished (even after becoming a "homeowner").

Oddly, buy-to-let landlords do retain this deductible, though HMRC have fiddled around with how this works over recent times[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_so...

[1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-finan...

[philjohn]

Yes, the BTL sort of makes sense though if you view the mortgage as a business expense, but BTL has had a distorting effect on the UK housing market for too long - changes are desperately needed here, but with so many Tory donors being housing firms, it's unlikely to happen.