Pay lower than stated on contract

Hi there,

You first give your contract a very good read to see the clauses and conditions and see if there's anything you might have done to have pay deductions. Also remember that your company will automatically substract tax from your wage so your take-home pay will actually be less than whatever is stated on the contract anyway, so check your payslips to see your pre-tax wage. It's also a good idea to calculate how much tax and National Insurance you should be paying and see if that accounts for any discrepancy between your nominal salary and the salary you actually take home. I suspect this will be the reason why - welcome to adulthood. Taxes suck, eh?

But if there is still some unaccounted money missing, you bring this to the attention of your company ASAP and ask to sit down with someone to discuss you making less money than what's stated in your contract. They might be really nice and give you a meeting and explain to you why your wages are like they are, or there might be a mistake and they'll be quick to rectify it, or... they might beat around the bush and try to avoid dealing with it. Should this happen, you need to contact ACAS, those are the work dispute guys and they'll force your employer into a meeting to talk about this, and if the matter's unsolved, then the matter could go to employment court. Sadly, you're only allowed to bring claims to ACAS for money that you should have been paid but weren't in the last 3 months, so basically, you'll only get back the money you're owed in the last three months but not the rest of the year. But as I said before, it's probably just the bane of every worker's existance - taxes.

Hope this helps

So I started a job 1 year ago and my contract said I'd be getting £22k. I was making it £1.2-something per month, this eventually went up in April to £1.5k per month

However, I was transfered to a new company recently, under the same contract, and was told that my salary to date was £21.99k which made no sense so I started investigating and found that this entire time I was actually not making £22k.

What can I do now? Considering I clearly signed a contract for £22k, can I make a claim for missing wages? Is the contract even legally valid?

If you are on 22k, then you would be getting about 1.5k per month. So was the 22k after your probation was completed perhaps? Are you paying into a workplace pension scheme? Are you paying a student loan?

If you Google Listentotaxman there is a website that can explain the various deductions etc and what you will get out of your gross pay. Play around with that based on what you are taking home and see if that explains things.

Hi thank you for your answer but I think you misunderstood me, I will explain it again.


Contract signed on August 2022 said £22k annual salary before tax

Monthly pay pay from August 2022 to March 2023 was £1299 after tax and other reductions

Monthly pay then went up to £1500 April 1st.

I have now just realised that had I actually been making £22k a year, then my pay from August 2022 to March 2023 would have been £1500 after tax, and would have gone up after April 1st.

I only realised this now as I was recently TUPEd to a new organisation and they told me that my salary has been £21,999 this entire time.

I plan to speak to HR but I would like to know if there is anything that I can do as it seems to me that they have been unpaying me and breaching their contract as I signed a contract for a certain amount and I am not receiving it.