Money Matters
Setting up a Bank Account
You will need to provide details of a bank account which your wages will be paid into. If you are joining us from abroad, the Recruitment team will provide you with a letter which will enable you to open a bank account, either in a high street bank or online.
Coins and Notes
Understanding money is core to life in any country. In the UK, the currency (pounds and pence) comes in coins, notes, and can be spent electronically by debit or credit card.
There are 100 pennies (or pence, or just “p” for short, pronounced like pea) in a pound (£), and that’s it! It’s written pounds first, then pence, for example, six pounds and fourteen pence is written £6.14.
Bank of Scotland notes look like this:
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) notes look like this:
Clydesdale bank notes look like this:
Some premises may not accept £50 or £100 notes, as these larger notes are the most common counterfeit notes.
Card Payments
Since COVID19, card payments have become the norm. Debit cards, linked directly to your bank account allow you to either pay via Chip and PIN (by inserting your debit card and entering a private 4-digit Personal Identification Number, or PIN), or with contactless payment for payments up to £100. Services like Google Pay, Apple Pay and certain banking apps allow you to make purchases with contactless payments using the phone’s NFC chip.
Currency exchange
Banks and Post Offices offer safe and reliable ways to exchange currency. You can check the most up to date exchange rates at the link below.
Link: www.xe.com/currencyconverter/
Taxes
Your pay slip will show the deductions taken from it or tax.
Income Tax
Income tax is tax that you pay on your income – it’s really that simple! The amount of income tax that you pay depends on what you earn.
You can learn more about tax bands here: www.gov.uk/income-tax
Income tax is automatically deducted from your pay cheque, so you don’t need to do extra paperwork to pay it.
Some benefits you can get through work are “before tax”; this means that some costs are taken out of your pay cheque before tax is calculated, in exchange for some workplace benefits. This means that as a result, you will pay slightly less in income tax.
National Insurance Contribution
National insurance (NI) is a contribution that both you and your employer pay towards your state pension. This is also automatically taken from your pay cheque, meaning that there’s no extra paperwork for you to do!
You can find out more about NI here: www.gov.uk/national-insurance
You will be issued with a unique National Insurance (NI) number. This will be printed on the back of your Biometric Residence Permit (BRP). If you do not have an NI number you should apply by phone on 0800 141 2079 or online at www.gov.uk.
Value Added Tax (VAT)
Most goods and services in the UK are taxed at a rate of 20%, called VAT. However, unlike some other places in the world, the price you see on the shelf is inclusive of VAT, so there’s no maths at the check-out!
