Effect of salary sacrifice pension payments on annual allowance

In the tax year 2023/24 my gross salary was £70k. I made pension contributions of £43k to my workplace personal pension through a salary sacrifice scheme. My employer added contributions of £15k, bringing total contrubutions to my pension pot to £58k. I thought this kept me within the amount I could contribute before paying tax, as the annual allowance was £60k. My net salary, after making the pension payment through salary sacrifice, was £27k. I've now read that I would need to pay tax on pension contributions which are more than 100% of my salary. Can I ask if I need to pay tax on the difference between £27K (net salary) and £58k (total pension payments)? Or between £27k and £43k (my pension payments excluding employer contributions? Or nothing at all, as my gross salary exceeded the annual allowance? Thank you

Hi,

You can see guidance here:

Tax on your private pension contributions

Thank you. 

I have the same question, which isn't answered by the information on the link. Can someone please confirm if the earnings used to calculate the max contribution is pre or post deduction due to salary sacrifice, as clearly expressed in the previous post.

Hi JMSMITH, As you say, the link was not help as it doesn't give information about the effect of salary sacrifice. However I got a helpful response from my employer's pension specialist, that contributions made by salary sacrifice are deemed to be employer (not employee) contributions, so they are not subject to the 100% of salary restriction which applies to personal contributions. I should therefore receive the full annual allowance of £60k (this assumes I'm not already taking benefits and the tapering limit doesn't apply). This makes a lot of sense to me as it's clear from my pension account that payments in area deemed employer contributions and no element is distinguished as coming from me personally. Hope that helps.