Private Pension Contributions Tax Relief

Hi. I have a query about adding to my personal pension. I am self-employed, so I do not have a fixed income. My pension is with a private Pension scheme, not an Employer based scheme, so all money paid in is not matched by an employer. My questions are; - As I understand it, the government will top up my contributions with tax relief and the maximum I can pay per year is relative to my earnings. I would like to top up the maximum amount in my pension but as the tax year is not completed until 6th April, my final earnings are not complete. Are the maximum contributions related to the CURRENT tax year (2023-24) or the previous? (2022-23). - I have only recently been topping up my private pension, so is it possible to top up previous years pension allowance where no or very little contributions were made, nd still get government tax relief? Thanks

Hi,

In the current tax year, you can claim tax relief on pension payments up to the amount of income from employmnent or self employment or £60000, whichever is the lower.

Your pension provider claims tax from HMRC and you enter the gross payment, your payment plus tax claimed, in the tax return, so that any additional tax relief due is claimed. Although you can pay more than the tax free threshold into your pension scheme, any amount above the threshold, does not qualify for any relief, so is taxed as income.  

You can carry forward any unused earnings threshold from the 3 previous tax years and add it to the current year threshold, so that a larger payment can be made and still qualify for tax relief. Any payments over the threshold should be declared on SA101 supplementary page of a Self Assessment tax return. You can see guidance here:

Check if you have unused annual allowances on your pension savings

Thank you.