What tax code will I be given for a second job in the UK?

Full answer

Having a second job raises common questions about tax codes, since the second payslip often shows a much higher percentage of tax deducted than the first, leading many people to wrongly assume they're being unfairly double-taxed. **Why the Personal Allowance is only given to one job** Everyone gets a single £12,570 tax-free Personal Allowance (2026/27) across ALL their income combined, not a separate Personal Allowance for each job -- to avoid the risk of under-collecting tax if the full allowance were mistakenly applied to both jobs' payroll systems independently, HMRC generally allocates your full Personal Allowance to what it identifies as your main job (usually your first job, or your highest-paying job, depending on how and when jobs were registered), and gives your second job a tax code that assumes no further tax-free allowance is available. **Common second job tax codes** The BR code applies a flat 20% tax rate to all income from that job, with no tax-free allowance -- this is the most common code for a second job where your combined income across both jobs is expected to keep you within the basic rate band overall. The D0 code applies a flat 40% rate, generally used where your combined income means the second job's earnings are expected to fall entirely within the higher rate band. The D1 code applies a flat 45%, used similarly for additional rate taxpayers. **This usually results in broadly correct overall tax, not double taxation** Because your Personal Allowance has already been used against your main job's income, taxing your ENTIRE second job's income at a flat rate (rather than giving it a further tax-free slice) is generally the mathematically correct approach to ensure your combined income across both jobs is taxed at roughly the right overall rate -- it feels like a higher tax burden on the second payslip specifically, but it isn't inherently unfair once you consider your total income and total tax paid across both jobs together. **When the tax code might be wrong for your situation** Problems can arise if HMRC's assumption about which job should have the Personal Allowance doesn't match your actual circumstances -- for example, if your "second" job (by registration order) actually pays more than your "main" job, or if your total combined income across both jobs is actually quite low (meaning a flat 20% BR code on the second job could result in you paying MORE tax overall than you should, since some of your Personal Allowance might genuinely be going unused). In these situations, it's worth contacting HMRC directly to review and potentially rebalance how your Personal Allowance is split. **Rebalancing the Personal Allowance between jobs** If your circumstances mean it would be more accurate to split your Personal Allowance differently (or move it to the other job entirely), you can ask HMRC to do this -- for example, someone with a modest income from their main job and a modest second job might benefit from having the Personal Allowance split proportionally, or moved to whichever job needs it more, so that neither job over- or under-collects tax across the year. **Self-employed second income is different** If your "second job" is actually self-employment (rather than a second employed job on PAYE), tax isn't deducted through a tax code at all -- instead, this income is reported and taxed through Self Assessment, with your Personal Allowance and tax bands applied to your TOTAL income (employment plus self-employment) together when your tax return is calculated, which works quite differently from the PAYE tax-code system used for two employed jobs. **Reconciliation happens automatically over the tax year** Even if your tax codes across two jobs aren't perfectly optimised in-year, HMRC's systems generally reconcile your overall tax position at the end of the tax year (or sooner, if you contact them to review your coding), issuing a refund if you've overpaid, or a bill (often via an adjusted future tax code, sometimes called a P800 calculation) if you've underpaid -- so a slightly imperfect in-year tax code split doesn't necessarily mean a permanent overpayment or underpayment, provided it's eventually reconciled correctly. **Practical tip** If your second job's payslip shows a BR, D0, or D1 code and this feels wrong given your actual combined income from both jobs, use HMRC's online tax checker or contact HMRC directly to review how your Personal Allowance is being split, since incorrect job registration order (rather than your actual relative earnings) is a common reason for an inefficient split that's easily corrected once flagged.

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