Mr I B Naina v Transport UK London Bus Ltd: 6036344/2025
JUDGMENT
The claims are dismissedREASONS
[1]The claim presented on 2/10/25 was for “other payments”.[2]I was referred to a Respondent’s bundle of 91 pages and to various payslips, emails and tax documents produced by the Claimant. I read the statement dated 11/2/2026 of the Respondent’s witness Ms J Faichey, who could not attend to give evidence. I give it significant weight and accept its contents accord with the available documentation and are plausible and reasonable.[3]The Claimant claimed he had not been paid for Christmas Day 2024. That claim is outside the jurisdiction of the Tribunal as it was presented over six months late. In any event the Claimant did not challenge Ms Faichey’s evidence about this, which was as follows: “The Claimant’s contract states: Bus drivers will be rostered four weeks (20 days) annual leave per year, one week in each of Spring and Autumn, with two weeks in a designated Summer period. Any remaining balance can be taken subject to management agreement The Company reserves the right to designate 8 days in accordance with local circumstances. These may or may not be bank holidays Management will post amended bus services and diagrams for all Public and Bank Holidays. A rotation roster will be produced to match the depot diagram commitment. Those bus drivers who are rostered either rest day, holiday as part of their rostered Spring, Summer or Autumn weeks or are certified sick, will not be required to work Those Bus Drivers, who otherwise would have worked on this day and are not required, will be rostered leave from their annual entitlement It is important for the Respondent to have the ability to roster driver holiday accordingly as it provides public transport services as agreed with TfL. It can be seen from the attendance report, that the Claimant had already used his 33 days holiday by September 2024. As such, when it came to rostering for Christmas Day and the Claimant was not required to work, it followed that he had no leave entitlement to use and thus the day was unpaid.”[4]The Claimant also claimed that the Respondent had made excessive deductions from his pay of tax and National Insurance contributions during 2025.[5]The Respondent made deductions of tax and NI contributions from the Claimant’s pay in accordance with tax codes provided to it by HMRC. Those deductions were required by the PAYE laws and thus made in accordance with a statutory provision, namely section 14(3) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, and were not unauthorised.[6]The Claimant claimed that he had ben told on the telephone by some unnamed person at HMRC that the “Respondent’s software was faulty”. I do not accept this evidence because no HMRC document has been produced to confirm it and it is inherently implausible because if it was faulty other employees would be complaining but there is no evidence of this.[7]The Claimant did experience “a tax bubble’ - ie an increase in tax deductions in September 2025. The tax reduced again by 24 October 2025. This is explained by the operation of the normal PAYE system. As the Respondent has explained to the Claimant in its Response and in other previous written explanations given to the Claimant, the bubble was caused by the Respondent having received notification of the new tax code from HMRC in the form of a P6 notice that the Claimant also had previous taxable earnings of £13,359, and that he had paid £1696.40 in tax on those earnings within the same tax year. The Respondent was therefore required by HMRC to apply these figures to the Claimant’s year to date figures. This change was part-way through the tax year, and so the Respondent was required to recalculate the Claimant’s tax deductions to ensure the correct amount of tax had been deducted overall in the year to date.[8]If the Claimant ends up paying excessive tax and NI contributions in the tax year to April 2026 then his remedy is to make a return to HMRC online. Any excess will then be refunded to him.[9]He has not shown that there have been any unauthorised deductions so the claims fail.