How Do I Claim a PPI Tax Refund in 2024?

When it comes to tax, it usually gets taken from everything. PPI payouts were susceptible to tax when it came to interest, so you may have had a smaller settlement than you were expecting. However, you were able to claim this back, entitling you to another payout from a PPI tax refund.

This article will go over what a PPI tax refund from HMRC was, why you were able to claim it and when the deadline was. When it comes to reclaiming tax in 2024, the countdown was on before it became too late to reclaim PPI tax. Even though the deadline for making a PPI claim passed a while back, it’s now virtually impossible to get the tax refunded.

What Was a PPI Tax Refund?

When you received a PPI payout, 20% tax was automatically deducted from the interest. This reduced how much you received in compensation, but mostly this was unfair as many people did not need to pay this tax. Since 2016, you’ve been able to earn a certain amount of interest a year without having to pay tax on it.

Personal Savings Allowance

The personal savings allowances have been in place since 6th April 2016. When it was introduced, any subsequent PPI payouts were automatically checked to see if they had any tax taken off them.

The personal savings allowances (what you can earn tax-free) are as follows:

• 20% rate taxpayer: £1,000 in interest a year

• 40% rate taxpayer: £500 in interest a year

• 45% rate taxpayer: no allowance

Basic rate taxpayers earn between £12,571 and £50,270. Higher rate taxpayers earn between £50,271 and £125,140. Additional rate taxpayers earn over £125,140.

Although the additional rate of tax has been lowered since April 2023 from £150,000, anyone earning this much still does not qualify for a personal savings allowance. This also doesn’t affect 40% taxpayers making a PPI tax refund as the personal savings allowance is unchanged.

Why Could I Have Reclaimed Tax?

Thanks to the introduction of the personal savings allowance, you can earn up to £1,000 in interest from any of your income completely tax-free. As savings interest rates haven’t been high in recent years, this means that anyone who was taxed on a PPI payout could have been entitled to it all back. It was probably worth checking to see how much interest you had earned a year to see if there was anything left.

A PPI tax refund gave you a chance to claim any of that interest back, providing you didn’t earn more than your savings allowance permitted. As PPI payouts were potentially thousands of pounds, this meant you may could have had hundreds deducted in tax. If you wanted to make a PPI tax claim, it needed to be done before the deadline.

Were you a Barclays customer when you had PPI? You cold be entitled to compensation.

When Was the Deadline for Making a PPI Tax Refund?

The very final time you could have made a claim for PPI was back in 2019. As you can only backdate tax claims by up to four years, this meant the 2023/2024 tax year was your last chance to see if you were eligible for a PPI tax refund. HMRC wasn't advertising this or reminding you to make a claim because now that it's passed 6th April 2024, they have kept any money you might have been entitled to.

You had until the 5th April 2024 to make a claim for a PPI tax refund. As August 2019 was the deadline for a PPI claim, you are not able to claim any tax back in subsequent years. This also means that any payouts before 6th April 2019 have already passed the deadline.

What Dates Qualified?

The last dates that qualified for a PPI tax refund were any payouts that were received between 6th April 2019 and 29th August 2019. Any historic claims are beyond the deadline and no payouts were received after this date. Unless you received your PPI payout after the 2019 deadline due to circumstances outside of your control, you can no longer make a claim for PPI tax.

How Do I Know If I Paid Tax on PPI?

The best way to check if you paid tax on your PPI payout is to look at your refund statement. It should detail if any tax was deducted. If you don’t have this paperwork or there isn’t a breakdown on your statement, you can request this from the company that issued the refund.

Could I Have Backdated a PPI Tax Claim?

You could only have backdated a PPI tax claim up until the deadline as this was the last time anyone who qualified could have made a claim. While tax claims can be backdated for four years, we've now passed that limit. As no PPI claims could be made after 2019, you are unable to claim PPI tax for the last three years or for 2023.

How Much Were PPI Tax Refunds Worth?

This depended on how much your PPI claim was, so while it could have been much more for some people, it could equally have been a lower amount for others. To put it into perspective, for every £100 that was issued as a refund, £20 was deducted in tax.

The total amount of your PPI tax refund also depended on how much of your personal savings allowance you made use of. If you were close to the limit of your allowance, you wouldn’t have received as much in compensation. Likewise, if you didn’t receive much interest in 2019, you would have been entitled to more. For some people, this could have been the full amount of tax that was deducted from their settlement.

How to Have Claimed a PPI Tax Refund

There were a few ways to claim. You could have requested a PPI tax refund from HMRC by filling in an R40 form or you could have made use of a claims management company.

HMRC

PPI tax refunds through HMRC required paperwork to be filled in. The R40 form refers to tax refunds from savings and investments. It could have either been completed online or by hand to be posted, but this process might have been tricky to understand. HMRC didn't necessarily make the forms entirely user-friendly, which was an issue when it came to the layman requesting a refund. Not everyone would have been familiar with filling in forms related to tax, income or refunds.

If you were self-employed, you couldn't claim a PPI tax refund that way; you needed to have completed this on your self-assessment.

Claims Management Company

For anyone who was unable to make a claim through HMRC or simply didn't have the time, a claims management company could have been the best solution. The closer the 5th April 2024 got, the easier it would have been to rely on the expertise of a company that dealt with refunds and liaised with HMRC on a daily basis.

The best part about making a PPI tax refund through a claims management company was that they did all the hard work for you. After you submitted your details, they checked to see if you were eligible and processed your claim. Meanwhile, you could have carried on with your busy life without having to have worried about filling in any paperwork.

To have found out if you were eligible to make a PPI tax refund, you could have filled in your details using the button below.