Tax Rebate Calculator

How much is my Tax Rebate worth? When you claim your tax rebate with RIFT, the only tricky part is deciding how to spend it. Use our simple tax rebate calculator for an instant estimate of the tax you could be owed back from HMRC. Average payouts come to £3,000. How will yours stack up?

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How ToAm I due a tax rebate?

To find out if you could be owed a tax rebate follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Select the tax year you want to claim a refund for. Remember that you can claim back what you’re owed from up to 4 tax years ago – so even if you’ve missed out on previous years you could still get your refunds!

Step 2: Enter your gross income for the tax year you’ve chosen. This is your total income before any tax was paid on it.

Step 3: Enter the total tax you paid on your income for the chosen tax year.

Step 4: Let us know about the business expenses you’re shelling out. There’s a lot more to tax refunds than just your work mileage. If you’ve paid out of your own pocket for any other essential costs of your job, don’t forget to enter them here.

Put these numbers into our handy tool and in seconds you’ll have an estimate* of what HMRC could owe you.

Tax Rebate CalculatorHow to claim a tax rebate now I've got an estimate

Once you know how much of a tax rebate could be worth, the next step is to get in touch with RIFT so we can start your claim.

Here's how it works:

  • You’ll send us a few details about your work and other circumstances.
  • You'll be assigned a Personal Tax Specialist to crunch the numbers, gather the information and build your claim.
  • We'll ask you to confirm that you're happy with the amount you're claiming. Once you are, we'll roll up our sleeves and dive into the paperwork.

The RIFT service doesn’t stop when we submit your claim to HMRC, though. With RIFT, you’ll get year-round aftercare and peace of mind with no extra charges to worry about. At the same time, we’ll chase the taxman for you until your claim’s paid out in full, protecting your money – and you.

Most importantly, we’ll keep you in the loop throughout the whole process. Our RIFT app lets you track your tax refund claim every step of the way and check your payout date at any time. Meanwhile, you can always get in touch by phone or email with any questions you have about your tax rebate.

Your free MyRIFT account means you can check and update any key information and tell us how you want your tax rebate paid. MyRIFT puts it all at your fingertips, instantly and anywhere.

HMRC TimescalesHow long will it take my HMRC tax rebate to come?

With 7 specialist tax refund teams working on your rebate claim, we'll get it calculated, checked and on the taxman's desk fast. HMRC tends to take between 8-10 weeks to handle a typical tax refund claim, so it's a great idea not to leave yours until the last minute. The sooner we have your information, the sooner you'll get your tax rebate.

If you've missed out on claiming before, it still might not be too late to get back what you're owed. You can claim back overpaid tax for up to 4-years, with the tax year ticking over on the 6th April. Anything you're still owed after 4 tax years roll by, is lost forever.

Why RIFTWhy chose RIFT to claim your tax rebate

RIFT Refunds Guarantee

RIFT Refunds Guarantee

Protecting you and your money.

No hidden costs with RIFT Refunds

No hidden costs

One fee covers everything. 

Peace of mind with RIFT Refunds

Peace of mind

We've reclaimed over £380 million.

We do the hard work

Established in 1999

Great service is a family tradition.

Self-Assessment Tax Returns Help?Looking for help with Self-Assessment tax returns instead?

Our tax rebate calculator is for people looking to claim tax back for essential work expenses. If you're looking to claim specifically for travel you can use our mileage calculator. If you're self-employed or using the Self-Assessment tax return system for other reasons, we can help with that too! 

RIFT GuaranteeOur guarantee means you'll never lose a penny

The RIFT Guarantee means you've got no worries about the taxman. As long as the information you've given us is correct, you're completely protected against HMRC inquiries about your tax rebate claim. If HMRC ever dug its heels in and demanded some of your refund payout back, we'd pay them ourselves at no cost to you! That's the magic of the RIFT Guarantee, protecting both you and your refund cash.

Tax Refund CalculatorUsing the RIFT tax rebate calculator to work out your tax

There's a few things to keep in mind so you don’t miss out:

  • It doesn’t matter whether you’re travelling via public transport or your own vehicle. If you’re paying for the journeys yourself we’ll give you an estimate of what you’re owed.
  • Depending on your situation and the work expenses you’re claiming for, you might need to file a Self Assessment tax return to get your tax rebate. Our calculator will let you know if you do, and RIFT will take care of it as part of our service.
  • Keep in mind that tax refunds are your legal right. They aren’t some kind of prize or dodgy way of “cheating the system”. This is your money and it should be back in your own pocket. Don’t be sad if the calculator says you’re not owed anything. That’s actually good news. It means the taxman’s been playing fair and you haven’t overpaid.

Very rarely, you might find yourself actually owing extra cash to HMRC. This is never fun, but when it happens you need to move fast to fix the problem. The calculator will give you a heads-up about this as well.

An average tax refund claimed with RIFT stacks up to £3,000 if you’ve missed claiming before, as your rebate could cover up to 4 tax years! The rules for important things like your tax-free Personal Allowance change over time, so the calculator handles each year separately to give you the clearest and most accurate estimate possible.

Tax Rebate CalculatorWorking out your PAYE take-home pay

When you pay your tax through the Pay As You Earn system, HMRC takes a bite out of your money before you even get it. The cash the taxman grabs this way goes toward your Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions, pension contributions and any Student Loan repayments your making. What you actually take home after all that is based on your tax-free Personal Allowance.

Pretty much everyone qualifies for some kind of Personal Allowance. Your allowance shows up in your tax code and determines how much you can earn before the taxman gets his cut. For the 204/25 tax year, for example, the standard Personal Allowance is £12,570. Anything you earn up to that threshold is tax-free.

After you’ve used up your Personal Allowance, you move into the basic rate Income Tax bracket. If your earnings are high enough, the top end of them might push into the higher rate, meaning even more tax comes gets taken. Looking again at the 2020/21 tax year, the “tax bands” look like this:

  • Up to £12,570: 0%
  • £12,571 to £50,270: 20% (basic rate)
  • £50,271 to £125,140: 40% (higher rate)
  • Over £125,140: 45%

With your Income Tax out of the way, you've got National Insurance Contributions (NICs) to consider. Your NICs go toward things like keeping up your State Pension eligibility, and the 2024/25 thresholds looks like this:

  • Employed and earning more than £242 per week

Or

  • Self-employed and making a profit of £6,725 or more per year

Click on the link below to understand more about national insurance contributions.

What are National Insurance Contributions?

Tax Refund CalculationsAre tax calculations only based on earnings?

No. In fact, there are quite a few things that can affect the tax you owe each year. Here are just a couple of examples.

  • Married Couples Allowance, for married couples where one spouse was born before the 6th of April 1935. Couples born after would use Marriage Allowance instead, where one spouse transfers part of their Personal Allowance to the other. This can be useful if either of you isn’t getting the full benefit of your Personal Allowance.
  • Registered blind people can get a boost to the tax-free portion of their income, on top of their normal Personal Allowance.

How much tax you owe can also change according to the NICs or Student Loan payments you’re making, or if you’re earning any money overseas. The tax rules are different, for instance, for people working abroad for foreign employers than for full-time UK workers.

The other things you need to know about are your tax code and Personal Allowance. Your tax code is a string of numbers and letters that HMRC uses to work out your tax calculations. Tax codes cover your Personal Allowance and any special circumstances affecting your tax situation. It’s really important the make sure your tax code is correct – which is why RIFT will always check it for you and get it fixed if it’s wrong.

If you’re making any “salary sacrifices” in order to get benefits from your boss, the tax you owe can be affected. The same goes for any contributions you’ve made to a pension plan. It’s always worth double-checking on details like these, so RIFT takes special care with them.

This brings us to the main reason why people end up being owed an HMRC tax rebate. While the taxman generally does a good job of calculating what you owe, he can only work with the information he has to hand. The tax rules say you can get tax relief when you’re shelling out from your own pocket for many of the essentials of your work. However, HMRC isn’t a mind reader and won’t know what you’re spending unless you tell it. If you’re paying for things like travel to temporary workplaces (where you work for less than 24 months), for instance, you need to make a tax rebate claim to get your money back. That’s exactly what RIFT is here to help with, and our tax rebate calculator’s the perfect way to start.

ConstructionSelf-Employment and The Construction Industry Scheme

Self-employed people generally don’t pay their tax through the PAYE system. Instead, they submit yearly Self Assessment tax returns to report their earnings and expenses to HMRC. The Self Assessment rules allow you to count many essential expenses against the profits you’re being taxed on, bringing your tax bill down.

However, there’s a special system for the building trade called the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS). Under CIS, your contractor has to hack off a whopping 20% chunk of your pay before handing the rest over. That missing chunk goes straight to the taxman. This can be a real pain for many construction workers, who end up not getting the full benefit of their tax-free Personal Allowances. Don’t worry, though, with RIFT’s help you’ll never find yourself losing out to HMRC. Use our free CIS tax rebate calculator to see how much you could get back.

Another thing self-employed people need to look out for is the NICs they’re being charged. The National Insurance rules are different when you work for yourself – but again, RIFT will make sure you never get tripped up.

CIS tax rebate calculatorCIS tax rebates

If you're working under the CIS scheme you're owed tax back. The average 4 year CIS tax rebate from RIFT is worth over £7,000. Check out our free CIS rebate calculator to get an instant estimate of how much cash you could be owed back from HMRC.

Tax Refund CalculationsWork mileage and tax rebates

Travel to temporary worksites is one of the main reasons why people end up being owed tax rebates each year. Our quick and simple mileage tax calculator will give you an instant estimate* of how much you could claim back from HMRC for your work travel.

The basic system works like this: HMRC has decided on a set of Approved Mileage Allowance Payment (AMAP) rates for essential work travel. If you’re footing the bill for public transport or travel in your own vehicle to a temporary workplace, the taxman says you can be reimbursed up to the appropriate AMAP rate. If you’re getting nothing toward your travel from your employer, or getting less than the AMAP rate you qualify for, you can claim back the difference as a tax rebate.

Cars and vans:

  • 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles.
  • 25p per mile after that.

Motorcycles:

  • 24p per mile.

Bicycles:

  • 20p per mile.

Tax refund calculationsDoes all my work travel count for a mileage claim

The taxman really doesn’t like it when people try to claim tax relief they haven’t earned. That’s where RIFT’s hard-won expertise really comes in. When HMRC talks about temporary workplaces, he essentially means places you work for less than 24 months on the trot. Depending on your work, that could mean anything from a building site or an Army base right the way through to an offshore oil rig. Only sites you’re working at for less than 24 months count, so a daily commute to a permanent office won’t score you a tax refund.

Having said that, the tax rules are full of strange little wrinkles and exemptions. Again, having RIFT backing your claim up with solid proof and in-depth understanding of the tax laws makes all the difference. With our help, you’ll always get the most from your tax rebate – and stay in HMRC’s good books at the same time!

More like thisUK tax calculators

Our UK tax calculators are the ideal tools for finding out what you could be owed by HMRC. From income tax to mileage to, the road to your refund starts here.

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