I used Churchill Knight Umbrella and discovered that they calculated my taxable income incorrectly when reporting to HMRC. As a result, I’ve been paying more tax than my actual take-home salary.

When I raised this by email, they dismissed it, saying I had “entered the 40% tax bracket.” This completely ignored the fact that UK income tax is structured — some income should be tax-free, then 20%, then 40%, with only the highest portion taxed at 45%. Instead, my entire income was taxed at an effective rate above 45%.

I also provided my P45 to them, which they assured me had been sent on to HMRC. When I later contacted HMRC directly, they confirmed they had not received it from Churchill Knight. HMRC also told me they had no idea how Churchill Knight had calculated my tax, but confirmed that it was wrong.

I sent multiple emails back and forth, but they didn’t properly investigate the issue or recognise the red flags. Only when I called them directly did they agree to look into it - I’m still waiting on a resolution.

On top of that, I explicitly opted out of the workplace pension in order to continue with my private pension, but they still enrolled me into their scheme against my instructions.

This has wasted me hours dealing with issues that were entirely caused by their mistakes. For a company that specialises in payroll and charges for this service, the lack of accuracy and attention is very concerning. I expected professional handling of something as important as tax, but instead I’ve had stress, overpayment, and poor communication.