Chapter 3: The First Payslip

The app says paid.

I’m in the bathroom at school, lunch break, sitting on the closed toilet lid because that’s my office now apparently, and the notification just came through. NatWest. A green banner at the top of the screen.

Payment received: £66.56

I stare at it.

Sixty-six quid. Fifty-six pence.

I worked thirteen hours. Thirteen times six-forty is eighty-three pounds and twenty pence. I know this because I’ve worked it out about fourteen times since the rota came through. Eighty-three twenty. That’s what I earned. That’s the number I’ve been carrying around in my head all week, the number I budgeted against, the number I was counting on.

Sixty-six fifty-six is not eighty-three twenty.

I open the calculator. Eighty-three twenty minus sixty-six fifty-six. Sixteen pounds and sixty-four pence. That’s the gap. Sixteen quid and change, just — gone. Taken. By someone, for something, before the money even touched my account.

I close the app and open it again. Same number.

There’s a payslip. Donna said they’d be on the staff portal. I haven’t checked. I didn’t think I’d need to — I thought the numbers were the numbers. You work hours, you multiply by your rate, you get paid. That’s how it works.

That’s not how it works.

I can’t check the portal at school because the Wi-Fi blocks everything useful and my data’s nearly gone. So I sit through double geography thinking about sixteen pounds. I sit through registration thinking about sixteen pounds. I walk to the bus stop thinking about sixteen pounds and sixty-four pence.

On the bus home I get my phone out and try to log in to the staff portal. The password doesn’t work. I reset it. The reset email takes four minutes. I type the new password wrong twice because the bus is going over speed bumps and my thumbs are fat and the screen is cracked in the corner where the touch doesn’t register properly.

I get in.

There it is. My payslip. A little PDF icon next to a date.

I tap it open.

It looks — official. Like a proper document that a proper system generated about a proper person, and that person is me. My name at the top. Maya Hussain. My National Insurance number, the one I copied digit by digit from the photo on my phone. The company name. Greendale’s Supermarkets Ltd. A pay date. A thing called a tax period.

And then the numbers.

PAYMENTS
Basic Pay 13.00 hrs @ £6.40 …. £83.20

DEDUCTIONS
Income Tax …. £16.64
National Insurance …. £0.00

GROSS PAY: £83.20
NET PAY: £66.56

Gross pay. Net pay. There’s the eighty-three twenty at the top and the sixty-six fifty-six at the bottom and in between there’s a line that says Income Tax and a number next to it that says sixteen sixty-four.

Income tax. On my income. Which is eighty-three quid a week from stacking beans and scanning someone’s weekly shop at a till that beeps so loud I hear it in my sleep.

They taxed me.

I don’t — I don’t understand. I’m sixteen. I work thirteen hours a week. I earn less than Yus spends on Robux in a month. Who decided this needed taxing?

The bus jolts over a pothole and I nearly drop my phone. I catch it. I read the payslip again.

There’s another line I don’t understand. It says TAX CODE and next to it: BR.

BR. Two letters. No explanation. Just — BR.

I don’t know what that means. Any of it. Who took my sixteen quid, or why, or whether I can even get it back, or if this is just… what happens now. Every time.

I put my phone in my pocket. I stare out the window. The bus passes the supermarket and I look at it like it owes me something. Which it doesn’t. HMRC does, apparently. Whoever that is. Whatever BR means.

Sixteen pounds sixty-four.

That’s a bus pass for a week. Four meal deals. Nearly three hours of standing on my feet scanning someone’s shopping — just taken.

Thursday. Shift. Four to eight.

I’m in the break room before my shift starts, sitting at the table, payslip open on my phone. I’ve been looking at it on and off since Tuesday, like if I stare at it long enough the numbers will rearrange themselves into something that makes sense.

Darius comes in. He’s got a Tesco meal deal — which he eats in our break room because, he says, ‘their sandwiches are better and I refuse to pretend otherwise.’ He sits down across from me, peels the film off the sandwich, and glances at my phone.

‘First payslip?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Numbers don’t add up?’

I look at him. ‘How’d you know?’

‘Because that’s the face.’ He takes a bite. ‘Everyone makes that face. I made that face. It’s the “wait, where’s the rest of my money” face.’

I turn the phone towards him. He chews, looks at it, swallows.

‘Right. So this bit here —’ he taps the screen with a sandwich finger — ‘that’s your gross. What you actually earned. Eighty-three twenty.’

‘Yeah, I know that bit.’

‘And this bit at the bottom is your net. What you actually get.’

‘Yeah. I know that bit too. What I don’t know is why they’re different.’

He points at the middle. ‘HMRC gets their cut before you even see it. Welcome to being a grown-up.’

‘But I’m not a grown-up. I’m sixteen. I scan tins for six-forty an hour.’

‘Doesn’t matter. You earn, they take. They take it before you even see it. PAYE, innit. Pay As You Earn — except it’s not you earning, it’s them taking.’

‘But sixteen quid? That’s —’ I stop. I don’t want to say how much that is to me. How many hours that is. How many times I’ve added and subtracted that number in the last three days.

Darius puts the sandwich down. He’s looking at the payslip properly now. Not casual any more.

‘Hang on. What’s your tax code?’

‘It says BR.’

‘BR.’ He says it flat. Like a diagnosis. ‘Yeah. That’s your problem.’

‘What’s BR?’

‘Emergency tax code. They don’t know who you are yet, so they just take twenty per cent of everything. Like, everything. Until you ring them and sort it.’

I stare at him. ‘The maximum?’

‘Yeah. Twenty per cent of everything. Even though you probably earn, what, four grand a year? Five? You shouldn’t be paying tax at all.’

‘What?’

‘There’s like a — what’s it called — personal allowance or whatever. First twelve-something grand you earn, they don’t touch. Twelve and a half, I think. Point is, you’re miles under that. You shouldn’t be paying anything.’

The break room is quiet. Someone’s Tupperware is spinning in the microwave. I can hear the hum.

‘So they’re taking money they shouldn’t be taking.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And nobody told me.’

‘Nobody tells anyone. Happened to me too. First job, same thing. Emergency tax code. Didn’t even notice for two months because I didn’t look at my payslip.’

He picks the sandwich up again. Chews. Doesn’t seem angry about it any more, just — resigned. Like this is a thing that happens. A thing the system does.

‘Two months?’ I say.

‘Two months of tax I didn’t owe. Got it back eventually but I had to chase it. They don’t just give it back because they feel bad about it. You have to actually ring them.’

‘Ring who?’

‘HMRC.’

‘And say what?’

‘Say you’ve been put on the wrong tax code. Give them your National Insurance number. They’ll check it. They’ll fix it. Then the extra money comes back through your next payslip. Or the one after. They’re not exactly quick about it.’

I look at my phone. The payslip is still there. BR. Two letters that cost me sixteen quid and sixty-four pence.

‘How long does it take?’

Darius half-laughs. ‘The call? Mate. Bring a book.’

I try the app first.

Saturday morning. I’m in bed and I download the HMRC app because that seems like the modern, normal, not-having-to-talk-to-anyone way to fix this.

It asks me to set up a Government Gateway account. Fine. I start. It asks for my name and email. Fine. Then it asks for verification. It wants to confirm my identity using my — I scroll — credit record, or my tax credits information, or my P60.

I don’t have a credit record. I don’t have tax credits. I don’t have a P60 because I’ve never finished a tax year working. I’m sixteen. I have a payslip with the wrong tax code on it.

The app keeps offering other routes. Passport. Driving licence. I’m sixteen. I take the bus.

I close the app.

I try the GOV.UK online chat. It takes five pages of clicking to find it. I type my question. The bot asks me to pick a topic, gives me a link I’ve already read, and when I ask to speak to a real person it gives me a phone number. Of course it does.

I ring them on my lunch break at work. Saturday shift, seven to twelve. I’ve got thirty minutes and a phone with forty-two per cent battery.

I dial the number. 0300 200 3300. An automated voice. Press one for this. Press two for that. I press buttons. I get another menu. I press more buttons. I get put through to — hold music.

The hold music is terrible. Bland, repetitive, soul-crushing. A synthesiser doing something that might be Vivaldi if Vivaldi had been raised in a car park. Every thirty seconds, a recorded voice says, ‘Your call is important to us. Please hold and you will be connected to the next available adviser.’

My call is important to them. That’s why I’m listening to robot Vivaldi in the break room while my lunch gets cold.

Five minutes. Ten minutes.

Darius walks past the break room door. Sees me sitting there with the phone pressed to my ear. He mimes a cup of tea. I mouth ‘please’ and he disappears towards the kettle.

Fifteen minutes. Twenty.

The break room fills up and empties. Someone microwaves fish and the whole room smells like a harbour. I hold.

Twenty-five minutes. Thirty.

Darius brings the tea. Puts it down. Mouths ‘HMRC?’ I nod. He shakes his head slowly, like he’s watching someone walk into a burning building and there’s nothing he can do.

Thirty-five minutes. My battery is at twenty-nine per cent. I switch to speakerphone and put it on the table. The hold music fills the break room. Nobody complains. Maybe they’ve all been here.

Forty minutes.

‘Hello, HMRC, how can I help?’

I nearly fall off my chair.

‘Hi. Yeah. Um — I think I’m on the wrong tax code? My payslip says BR but it’s my first job and I don’t think I should be paying tax.’

‘Right, let me just — actually, that’s going to be a different department. Bear with me, I’ll transfer you.’

Hold music again. My battery drops to twenty-three per cent. Two minutes. Three. Then a click.

‘Hello, PAYE helpline, how can I help?’

I say the whole thing again.

The woman on the other end is nice. Not in a fake way. In a tired way, like she’s had this conversation five hundred times today and she doesn’t blame me for not knowing.

She asks for my National Insurance number. I read it off the photo on my phone.

She asks for my employer’s name. Greendale’s Supermarkets Ltd.

She asks when I started. Three weeks ago.

She types. I hear the keyboard. Then she says, ‘Yes, I can see you’re on a BR code. That shouldn’t be the case. Your earnings are well within the personal allowance. I’ll update your tax code to 1257L and notify your employer. The overpaid tax will be refunded through your next pay.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that. Is there anything else I can help with?’

I want to say: why did I have to call you for this? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why does the system default to taking my money and then make me spend forty minutes on hold to get it back? Who designed this? Are they okay?

I say: ‘No. That’s it. Thank you.’

‘Have a nice day.’

I hang up. I pick up the tea. It’s lukewarm.

Sixteen quid sixty-four. Coming back. Eventually. Because I knew to ask. Because Darius told me to ask. Because I looked at my payslip instead of just looking at the number in my bank app.

I drink the tea. Even lukewarm, it’s fine.

‘So?’ Darius finds me on the shop floor. I’m stacking pasta. He’s stacking pasta. We communicate through the medium of pasta.

‘They fixed it.’

‘There you go.’

‘Forty minutes on hold.’

‘Short for HMRC. Last time I rang them it was over an hour. I actually finished a whole episode of a podcast. Learnt about the life cycle of eels.’

I shelve a packet of penne. My lower back’s gone stiff from bending over the cage all shift. I straighten up and something clicks.

‘But why does it work like that? Why don’t they just — I dunno — give you the right code from the start?’

Darius straightens a row of fusilli. ‘Because the system doesn’t know you exist until your employer tells them you exist. And your employer doesn’t always tell them fast enough. And even when they do, HMRC processes a million people at once and yours gets put in a queue.’

‘So it’s no one’s fault.’

‘It’s everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. Which means it’s your problem.’ He shelves another pack. ‘That’s how it all is, mate. Nobody tells you. You just find out when it goes wrong.’

‘That’s rubbish.’

‘Yeah.’

He grabs another box of pasta from the cage. ‘But now you know. And most people your age? They don’t check. They just see the number in their bank and think that’s what they earned. They never look at the payslip.’

‘That’s rubbish too.’

‘Yeah. But that’s like —’ He pauses. Puts the box down. ‘I had a mate at my last job. Nineteen. First proper full-time gig. Was on an emergency code for four months.’

‘Four months?’

‘Four months, Maya. Overpaid hundreds. Didn’t know until his mum mentioned it. And by then it was — I mean, he got it back, but four months of being skinter than he needed to be because he didn’t look at a piece of paper.’

We stack in silence for a bit. The shop floor hums. Someone’s kid is screaming in aisle seven. A customer is standing in front of the linguine like she’s trying to decode a message from God.

‘Darius?’

‘Yeah?’

‘How did you know? About the tax code. About all of it.’

He doesn’t look at me. He’s reading the back of a pasta packet like it contains important information.

‘Same way you’re learning. Got it wrong first.’

That evening. Home. The flat.

The stairwell smells of someone else’s dinner — garlic and something fried — and the landing light’s gone again, so I do the last flight in the dark.

Nani’s in the kitchen making aloo gosht and the whole place smells like cumin and onions and something that makes the smallness of the flat feel less like a punishment and more like a room. Yus is on the floor with his phone, volume up, ignoring everything.

Mum comes in from her shift at half seven. She puts her bag down. Takes her shoes off. Stands in the doorway of the kitchen-slash-front-room-slash-my-bedroom and breathes.

‘Khana ready hai?’ she asks Nani.

Nani nods. Stirs the pot. Says something in Urdu I half catch — something about the onions not being right and the gas being too low on the new cooker.

Mum sits at the little table we finally put together last weekend. It wobbles. Everything wobbles in this flat. The table, the sofa bed, me. Theek hai. We manage.

I’ve left my payslip on the table. The printout — I printed it in the library at school because I wanted to see it on actual paper, not just a phone screen. I wanted to hold the thing that was wrong and know I’d fixed it.

Mum sees it. She picks it up. Reads it the way Mum reads things — quick, quiet, eyes moving but face not changing.

‘You should keep those,’ she says.

‘I know.’

‘No, I mean —’ She puts it down. ‘Every one. A folder or something. You’ll need them.’

‘For what?’

She shrugs. The kind of shrug that comes from having needed a payslip at the wrong moment and not had one.

‘Everything. You’d be surprised.’

She doesn’t ask how much I earned. She doesn’t ask about the tax or the code or the sixteen quid. She just says keep it. Like that’s the lesson. Like that’s all she can give me right now and she hopes it’s enough.

I put the payslip in the drawer with the tenancy agreement and the NI letter and all the other paper. The drawer of things we keep and don’t look at. Except now I’ve looked at one of them. And it mattered.

Later. Phone.

I’m lying in the dark and I can’t stop thinking about it. Not the sixteen quid — that’s coming back. But the way it happened. The way the system just — took it. Quietly. Automatically. No warning, no explanation, just a smaller number in my bank account and a two-letter code on a document I nearly didn’t read.

BR.

If Darius hadn’t been there — if I’d just seen sixty-six quid in my bank and thought ‘that’s what I earned’ — I’d never have known. I’d still be paying tax I don’t owe. Weeks, months, maybe the whole year. And nobody would have said a word.

And that’s what I keep turning over.

They just take it. And you have to ring them to get it back. And if you don’t ring — nobody tells you.

And who tells you to ask? Nobody. You find out from your mate at work, or from Google at one in the morning, or you don’t find out at all.

I lie back down. I did the thing. I made the call. The money’s coming back. Leave it.

I open Google. I type:

what else does HMRC take that you can get back

The results load. I start reading. Tax rebates for uniform washing. Work-from-home allowances. Marriage allowance. Most of it doesn’t apply to me. I keep scrolling. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty. My eyes are going but my brain won’t stop.

Then I click something. A GOV.UK page. I’d typed help for families on low income uk and this came up. Benefits, tax credits, something called Universal Credit. There’s a table underneath but it’s dense and the font is tiny on my phone and I don’t really understand what half of it means.

Something about hours. Something about income thresholds. Single parent households.

I screenshot it. I don’t know why. I don’t know what it means yet or whether it’s got anything to do with us. But the words are sitting in my head now, next to the emergency tax code and the sixteen quid and all the other things nobody told me about.

I close the browser. Lie back down. Stare at the crack in the ceiling and the bare bulb and the dark.

The estate’s quiet except for the usual — a car, a fox, the wind doing its thing. And me, sixteen years old, lying in a kitchen, with a screenshot on my phone I don’t fully understand.

I don’t sleep for a long time.