A 1167L tax code means your tax-free Personal Allowance for the year is £11,670, which is £900 below the standard £12,570. The “L” confirms you get the normal Personal Allowance, and the number tells your employer how much of your pay to leave untaxed before applying income tax through PAYE. Because the standard code is 1257L, seeing 1167L means HMRC has reduced your allowance by £900 to account for something like a workplace benefit, untaxed income on the side, or tax you underpaid in an earlier year.1GOV.UK. What Your Tax Code Means
What the Number and Letter Mean
Every PAYE code has two parts. The number is your tax-free allowance with the last digit dropped, so 1167 multiplied by ten gives £11,670. Your employer spreads that figure across the year, so each payslip includes a proportional slice of tax-free earnings before income tax is applied to the rest.2Low Incomes Tax Reform Group. Tax Codes: What Employers Need to Know
The “L” is the most common suffix and simply means you get the standard Personal Allowance, adjusted for whatever HMRC has added or deducted for your situation. Someone with the full allowance and no adjustments has 1257L. Yours reads 1167L because something has pulled that allowance down by exactly £900.1GOV.UK. What Your Tax Code Means
Why Your Allowance Is £900 Lower
The standard Personal Allowance for the 2025/26 and 2026/27 tax years is £12,570.3GOV.UK. Income Tax Rates and Allowances for Current and Previous Tax Years A few things commonly reduce it, and HMRC often combines more than one into a single code.
Workplace Benefits in Kind
The most frequent cause is a taxable benefit from your employer, such as private medical insurance or a company car. HMRC treats the value of those perks as part of your income even though no cash reaches you, and rather than sending you a separate tax bill, they cut your tax-free allowance so the tax comes out of your regular payslips. Your employer reports the value on a P11D form after each tax year.4Low Incomes Tax Reform Group. Paying Tax on Employment Benefits
When you first receive a benefit, there can be a delay. HMRC may not process the P11D until the following year, and once they do, they estimate the ongoing value and build it into your current code. If that estimate is too high or too low, you can ask HMRC to correct it.
Underpaid Tax From an Earlier Year
HMRC sometimes recovers a previous year’s shortfall by lowering your current code instead of asking for a lump sum. An underpayment of £900 last year could be collected by reducing this year’s allowance by that same amount. This method only works for shortfalls under £3,000; anything larger has to be paid separately.5GOV.UK. Pay Your Self Assessment Tax Bill: Through Your Tax Code
Untaxed Savings or Investment Income
Interest or investment income above your savings allowance is taxable. If HMRC knows about it, they may cut your PAYE code by the estimated amount so the tax comes out through payroll rather than through a Self Assessment return.
Income Approaching £100,000
If your adjusted net income goes above £100,000, your Personal Allowance drops by £1 for every £2 over that threshold, and disappears completely at £125,140.6GOV.UK. Income Tax Rates and Personal Allowances Someone earning around £101,800 would lose £900 of allowance and land on 1167L on that basis alone.
How to Check Whether 1167L Is Right for You
The fastest check is through the “Check your Income Tax” service in your Personal Tax Account on GOV.UK, or the HMRC app. You can see your current code, HMRC’s estimated income from each job or pension, and the tax they expect you to pay for the year. The same service lets you report changes.7GOV.UK. Check Your Income Tax for the Current Year
Pull together three documents before you review anything. Your P60 shows total pay and tax deducted for last year and gives you a baseline.8GOV.UK. Your P45, P60 and P11D Form – P60 Your P11D lists the taxable value of any workplace benefits you receive.9GOV.UK. Expenses and Benefits for Employers: Reporting and Paying Recent payslips let you project your annual earnings and sense-check HMRC’s figures.
You should also have a P2 Coding Notice from HMRC. The P2 breaks down every addition and deduction that went into your code, so it’s the clearest way to see where the £900 reduction came from. If the notice lists a benefit you no longer receive, or an underpayment you’ve already settled, that’s your signal to contact HMRC.10HM Revenue and Customs. PAYE Manual – Coding: Codes: How They Are Used and Calculated: P2 Notice of Coding
How to Get Your Code Changed
You can update most of what HMRC holds about you through the Personal Tax Account or the HMRC app: a change in benefits, a new estimate of savings income, or a switch of employer. Once you submit the update, HMRC issues a fresh P2 explaining the recalculation and sends a digital notification to your employer, who applies the new code from your next pay period.11Low Incomes Tax Reform Group. PAYE Coding Notices Keep each P2 you receive during the year; if your code changes more than once, the stack of notices is how you trace what changed and why.
What Happens If 1167L Turns Out To Be Wrong
After the tax year ends on 5 April, HMRC compares what you actually earned with what your code assumed. If the numbers don’t match, they send either a P800 tax calculation or a Simple Assessment letter (PA302), typically between June and the following March.12GOV.UK. Tax Overpayments and Underpayments
If you overpaid, the P800 explains how to claim a refund. Online requests are usually paid within five working days; if you do nothing, HMRC posts a cheque after 45 days.
If you underpaid, HMRC generally recovers the shortfall by adjusting next year’s code, provided the amount is under £3,000. Larger underpayments have to be paid directly. Interest runs on outstanding amounts at 7.75% (as of January 2026), calculated from the original due date.13GOV.UK. HMRC Interest Rates for Late and Early Payments
This is why checking early matters. Catching an error in May costs you a few weeks of incorrect deductions. Discovering it the following January means most of the year has already gone through payroll on the wrong basis, and putting it right takes longer.
Variations of 1167L You Might See
Your code can carry a prefix or a marker that changes how it’s applied without changing the underlying allowance.
- S1167L means you live in Scotland and Scottish income tax rates apply to your non-savings, non-dividend income.
- C1167L means you live in Wales and Welsh income tax rates apply.14HM Revenue and Customs. PAYE Manual – Coding: General Principles: Scottish Income Tax / Welsh Income Tax
- 1167L W1 or 1167L M1 is an emergency code. The allowance still works out to £11,670, but the W1 or M1 marker tells your employer to tax each pay period on its own rather than cumulatively across the year, which usually results in overtaxation until HMRC sends the correct code.15GOV.UK. Emergency Tax Codes
Codes without any digits, such as BR, 0T, or K codes, work on completely different rules and mean something quite different from 1167L. If your code changes to one of those, the P2 notice HMRC sends should explain why.1GOV.UK. What Your Tax Code Means