What Is a P60? A Plain-English Guide to Your End of Year Certificate

Reviewed by Shamayun Chowdhury, CIMA qualified accountant  |  Published: October 2026  |  Last reviewed: October 2026  |  For: UK employees, pensioners and salaried directors

The P60 is one of those documents that arrives quietly every spring, gets filed away, and is then urgently needed a year later when a lender, an accountant or HMRC asks for it. Many people keep it without ever really knowing what the boxes on it mean.

This guide explains what a P60 is, what it proves, and how to read it properly – including the most common question we hear: why the pay figure on it doesn’t match the salary in your contract.

What is a P60?

A P60 is the formal year-end record of your earnings from a single PAYE employment. Its full title is the P60 End of Year Certificate, and it confirms three things for one tax year:

• how much taxable pay you received from that employer or pension payer
• how much Income Tax was taken from that pay
• how much National Insurance you contributed

The UK tax year doesn’t follow the calendar. It starts on 6 April and finishes on 5 April the following year, so a P60 for the 2025/26 tax year covers your pay from 6 April 2025 up to and including 5 April 2026.

Your employer prepares the P60 from its payroll records once the tax year has closed. It can be handed to you on paper or sent electronically – a PDF in an HR portal is just as valid as a printed copy.

What does P60 mean in simple terms?

In everyday language, a P60 is your employer’s signed-off answer to the question: “What did you pay me this year, and how much tax did you take?” If a payslip is a snapshot of one pay day, the P60 is the full-year total.

The name itself isn’t short for anything. “P60” is simply HMRC’s reference number for the form, in the same way the P45 and P11D are named after their form numbers. So if you’ve searched “what’s a P60” or “P60 meaning”, the answer is the same: it’s your annual PAYE pay and tax certificate.

What is a P60 used for?

A P60 is evidence. It’s the document other people rely on when they need to know what you earned through PAYE and what tax you’ve already paid. You’re most likely to need it when:

Because it can be needed years later, it’s worth keeping every P60 you receive. A simple digital folder, organised by tax year, saves a lot of chasing when someone asks for “your last three P60s”.

Who gets a P60 – and why you might have more than one

Whether you receive a P60 comes down to one date. If a business or pension scheme was paying you through PAYE on 5 April, it owes you a P60 for that tax year. Your hours, your contract type and the size of your pay packet make no difference.

Here’s how that plays out for different people:

Why have I got several P60s? Receiving more than one is completely normal if you held more than one PAYE income on 5 April – for example a main job plus a weekend job, or a part-time role alongside a company pension. Each payer only knows about its own payroll, so none of your P60s will show your combined income. Keep them together, because a lender or tax return will usually need the total.

The P60 form explained, box by box

Payroll software formats the P60 form in slightly different ways, but the same sections appear on every version. The example below shows how a typical P60 is laid out, followed by what each part means.

Illustrative example only. The person, employer, reference numbers and figures are invented to show the layout. This example uses the 2025/26 tax year, the £12,570 Personal Allowance and the 20% basic rate for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Here’s what each part is telling you:

1. Your identity details. Your name, National Insurance number and payroll number link the certificate to your HMRC record. A single wrong character in the NI number is worth reporting straight away, because it can put your contributions on the wrong record.
2. Pay and tax in previous employment(s). This box is filled in only when you joined part-way through the year and your new employer received the figures from your old job’s P45. In the example, Sam started this job in July, so the first three months of the year appear here.
3. Pay and tax in this employment. This covers only what this employer paid you and deducted. If you’ve only had one job all year, this will be the same as the total.
4. Total for year. The two boxes above added together. In the example, £30,000 less the £12,570 Personal Allowance leaves £17,430 taxable, and 20% of that is £3,486 – which matches the tax deducted, so Sam’s tax looks right.
5. Final tax code. The code your employer was using on 5 April. A standard code like 1257L is reassuring; a code with W1, M1 or X at the end is an emergency basis and worth a closer look.
6. National Insurance. Unlike tax, NI is worked out separately for each job and isn’t carried over from previous employers, so this section covers this employment only. The category letter (A for most adults under State Pension age) controls the rate you pay.
7. Other deductions and payments. Student or postgraduate loan repayments appear here, along with statutory payments such as maternity or paternity pay if you received any during the year.
8. Employer details and PAYE reference. The PAYE reference identifies your employer’s payroll scheme at HMRC. Make a note of it – you’ll be asked for it if you ever contact HMRC about this job.

One important point: the “pay” on a P60 is your taxable pay, not necessarily the salary written in your contract. The next section explains why those two numbers often differ.

Why your P60 doesn’t match your salary

It’s one of the most common surprises: your contract says £30,000, but your P60 shows something noticeably lower – or occasionally higher. In most cases nothing has gone wrong. The P60 records taxable pay actually paid to you between 6 April and 5 April, and several everyday arrangements change that figure.

A quick illustration. Two colleagues each earn a £30,000 salary and pay 5% into a workplace pension. One is in a scheme that takes contributions before tax, so her P60 shows £28,500 of taxable pay. The other is in a “relief at source” scheme, where the contribution is taken after tax and the pension provider claims the basic-rate relief from HMRC – so his P60 shows the full £30,000. Same salary, same pension rate, different P60s, and both are correct.

The practical lesson: when a mortgage lender or landlord compares your P60 with your contract, a gap isn’t automatically a problem. Keeping a payslip that shows the pension or sacrifice deduction makes the difference easy to explain.

What a P60 doesn’t show

A P60 is a precise document, but it’s also a narrow one. It only describes PAYE pay from one employer or pension. These are the gaps people most often miss:

• Most benefits in kind. A company car, private medical insurance or a beneficial loan is usually reported to HMRC on a separate form, the P11D – unless your employer payrolls the benefit, in which case it’s already inside your taxable pay.
• Your employer’s pension contributions. Money your employer adds to your pension on top of your salary doesn’t appear on the P60.
• Income outside payroll. Self-employed profits, rental income, savings interest and dividends never appear on a P60, even if they’re taxable.
• A job you left before 5 April. That pay sits on the P45 from that job, unless your next employer carried it into the “previous employment” box.
• Whether your tax was right. The P60 shows what was deducted, not what you should have paid. If your tax code was wrong during the year, the P60 will faithfully record the wrong amount.

This is why a P60 is a starting point rather than the full picture when you complete a tax return or check whether you’re due a refund. If you have income from more than one source, you’ll need the other records alongside it.

P60 vs P45 vs payslip

All three documents talk about your pay and tax, which is why they’re so often mixed up. The difference lies in when each one is produced and what period it describes. A payslip looks at one pay day, a P45 looks back from the day you leave a job, and a P60 looks back over a completed tax year.

P45 vs P60 – the one rule to remember. They’re not interchangeable. A new employer can’t use your P60 to set your tax code, because it describes a year that has already finished; they need the current-year position from a P45, or a starter checklist if you don’t have one. In the other direction, a lender asking for your annual income will usually want a P60 rather than a P45, because a P45 only covers part of a year.

If you changed jobs during the year, you may end up holding both: a P45 from the role you left and a P60 from the role you were in on 5 April. Keep them together – between them, they tell the full story of that year’s employment income.

How to get your P60

Accountant insights, mistakes and tips

Accountant insights

• Read the tax and National Insurance sections separately. Income Tax follows you from job to job through your tax code, but National Insurance is generally worked out job by job. Two small part-time jobs can each fall below the NI threshold, so seeing little or no NI on either P60 isn’t necessarily an error.
• A pension P60 often shows a “low” tax code. The State Pension is paid without tax being deducted, so HMRC usually collects the tax on it by reducing the tax code on a workplace or private pension. If your pension P60 shows a code well below 1257L, that’s often the reason.
• Check your P60 against your tax return data. When you file a Self Assessment return online, some employment details may already be filled in. Always compare them with your P60 rather than accepting them as they appear.

Common mistakes

• Quoting the P60 figure as your salary without context. If you use salary sacrifice or a before-tax pension scheme, your P60 will be lower than your contract salary. Give lenders both figures and the payslip that explains the gap.
• Expecting your State Pension to be on a P60. It won’t be. The State Pension isn’t paid through PAYE, so its yearly amount is confirmed separately by the Department for Work and Pensions.
• Assuming a P60 means your tax is right. The certificate only reports what was taken. An emergency code or a code split wrongly between two jobs can still leave you over- or underpaid.

Practical tips

• Check it within a week. Compare the P60 with the year-to-date totals on your last payslip of the tax year while payroll still has the details fresh.
• File the explaining payslip with it. Keep one payslip showing any pension or salary sacrifice deduction alongside each P60, so the numbers make sense to anyone reading them later.
• Keep your contact details current. Pension providers and employers increasingly issue P60s online or by email. Updating your details before you move house or change jobs means the next one actually reaches you.

Two worked scenarios

These examples are illustrative. Names and figures are invented to show how P60s work in practice.

P60 FAQs

What is a P60 in simple terms?

It’s a yearly summary from your employer or pension payer confirming what they paid you through PAYE between 6 April and 5 April, and how much Income Tax and National Insurance came off it. Think of it as the full-year version of your payslips.

What does P60 stand for?

Nothing beyond its form number. “P60” is the reference HMRC uses for the End of Year Certificate, just as “P45” and “P11D” are the reference numbers for those forms.

Is a P60 the same as a payslip?

No. You get a payslip every time you’re paid, and it describes that single payment. The P60 arrives once a year and pulls the whole tax year together into one set of totals.

Why is my P60 lower than my salary?

Usually because of salary sacrifice, pension contributions taken before tax, unpaid or statutory-paid leave, or because you only worked part of the year for that employer. The P60 shows taxable pay actually paid, not your contract salary.

Why have I got two P60s?

You had two PAYE incomes on 5 April – for example two jobs, or a job and a workplace pension. Each payer issues its own certificate covering only its own payments, so add them together for your total.

Do pensioners get a P60?

Yes, for any workplace or private pension paid through PAYE – the pension provider issues it. The State Pension isn’t paid through PAYE, so it doesn’t come with a P60.

Is an electronic P60 valid?

Yes. Employers are allowed to give you your P60 electronically, and a PDF from a payroll portal carries the same information and status as a printed copy.

Does a P60 show benefits like a company car?

Normally not. Benefits in kind are usually reported to HMRC on a P11D. The exception is when your employer taxes the benefit through payroll, in which case its value is already included in your P60 pay.

Do company directors get a P60?

Yes, if they’re paid a salary through the company’s payroll and are on that payroll on 5 April. Directors who take no salary – for example only dividends – won’t receive one.

How long should I keep my P60?

If you complete a Self Assessment tax return, keep your records for at least 22 months after the end of the tax year they relate to. Many people keep P60s for several years, because lenders often ask for more than one.

Can I use a P60 for a mortgage application?

Yes – it’s one of the most commonly requested proofs of employed income. Lenders typically want it alongside recent payslips, and if your P60 is lower than your salary because of salary sacrifice, include a payslip that shows why.

Sources

This article is general guidance based on HMRC rules at the date of review and isn’t personal tax advice. Examples are illustrative. For help with your own situation, speak to a qualified accountant or explore more of our UK tax guides.