Confused by change in tax amounts on my pensions

My husband passed away in March and as a consequence, my financial circumstances changed. Since his passing, my state pension has increased slightly and I am receiving around half of his work's pension. I already had two work's pensions of my own. Which brings the total to 3 works pensions, plus state pension (I am receiving the older state pension). Due to a long drawn out process in applying for my husbands pension, when it eventually came through, I received a lump sum in backpay. Also, the first 3 months of this was at his full rate, dropping to half after that. As a consequence, the tax code changed one of my existing work pensions from K34 to K1150X. It seems the lump sum backpay had created a wildly inaccurate estimate of my annual income. Resulting in me being placed in the higher tax bracket for some of my income. I updated the estimate for this new pension to the correct amount per annum (although, I have just realised that I made an error and didn't account for the 3 months full pay this tax year). This has resulted in my tax being switched from K1150X to K34X (not K34, as it was before). I am still confused by a number of things and I'd really appreciate some help (in layman's terms) please. When looking at my detailed PAYE Tax income for this tax year, it states that my private pension income is X amount. This total is correct for my annual income as a whole (pre-tax) but only if when including my state pension. Is the state pension considered a 'private pension' here? Similarly, with the tax-free amount, it says '£12,570 of your private pension earnings are tax free'. I presume this is including the state pension? The tax codes for the 3 private pensions are: BR BRX (Husband's pension) K34X I am unsure how to work out how much tax is payable on my existing pension which is K34X. The tax code info says: '£340 needs to be added to your pay or pension so the extra tax can be collected'. Can someone explain this in layman's terms please? I noticed that my state pension is £350 my tax-free personal allowance. Resulting in the amount of income I can have before paying tax is: -£350. Is the £340 that's being added to the K34X coming from the excess amount by which my state pension is over the tax-free allowance? If so, why £340 and not £350?

Hi,
 

If the State Pension is higher than the Personal Allowance this would lead to a K code, you will need to contact our Income Tax department so that we can review the income estimates and make sure you are on the correct tax code. See Links: Income Tax: general enquiries  . Thank you .

Thanks for your reply. Please can you help me with contacting the HMRC. I have called 5 times now, once on hold for 2 hours and no one answered the rest I get cut off after going through many automated questions and ultimately being told they can't help me. I am in poor health and I am not well enough to deal with this. Please can you help.

Hi,

Unfortunately we are unable to access your record from the forum to look into this.

All the contact methods for our Income Tax team are shown here:

Income Tax: general enquiries

Thank you