Key Post: Overpayment of Salary

Hi

I have discovered I am currently being overpaid (in fact I no longer work for the company, but they are continuing to pay me!). Do I have an absolute legal obligation to pay back the money? Will I have to pay back the gross / net? How will I sort out the tax?

Thanks

This exact situation came up a while back, I can't find the thread.

I think the consensus at the time was

1. You have a moral obligation to sort it out otherwise you're
stealing.

2. If you don't agree with the moral argument you should consider the fact that if you spend this money you'll be constantly worrying about being pursued for it when the company realises it's mistake.

As for the tax, you've presumably only received the Net amount, so you'd only have to repay the net amount. The company will have sent tax money to revenue and they'll have to sort that out.

I hope you're not the same person who posted this a while back, but if you are, fair play to you on getting away with it this long.



-Rd

overpaid

Thanks for the reply. No I'm not the same person, I think I found the thread to refer to, but it was from some-one who was being overpaid by his current employer, so presumingly there existed a contract where he agreed to have overpayment deducted from his salary. I know there is no moral argument, I have to pay it back. I wanted to know about the legal issues, I read somewhere that the old employers cannot recoup the cost of their mistake, and I'm unsure what this means.