Tax relief and the annual allowance

Hi, I'm Jennifer Irvine and I'm a Pension technical consultant in Royal London. I'm here with Jim Grant and we're going to talk about tax relief and annual allowance at this session. 
 
This slide shows the objectives of this session. 
 
This slide shows the learning objectives of this session. These are to have an understanding of – 

• the rules on tax relief and how much is available
• the relationship between the annual allowance and tax relief
• what triggers the money purchase annual allowance
• how to calculate the annual allowance when the taper applies
• how to calculate unused annual allowance using carry forward 
   

Now, let’s look at the first bullet point – the rules on tax relief. 
 
An employer contribution is paid gross and the corporation tax relief is claimed by deducting the contribution from taxable profits as an expense of the business. 

In theory, HMRC will accept any level of contribution as being an expense of the business so long as it is made ‘wholly and exclusively for the purpose of the trade or profession’.  There’s a lot of rules and examples of what this means on HMRC’s website but essentially, they’re designed to make sure that the rules on corporation tax relief aren’t abused, for example by making a contribution for a close relative of a controlling director that’s out of proportion to their worth to the company.   

Individuals get tax relief on their contributions (within limits) either by the relief at source system or the net pay arrangement.

Let’s look at how tax relief on member contributions is given in a little more detail. 
 
To qualify for tax relief, an individual must be a relevant UK individual. This means they must either:

• have relevant UK earnings chargeable to income tax for that tax year, or 
• be resident in the UK at some time during that tax year, or 
• have been resident in the UK at some time during the five previous tax years and when they joined the pension scheme.   
   

That last bit allows people going abroad to continue paying tax relievable member contributions to their pension scheme for up to 5 tax years after leaving the UK.  Assuming they don’t have relevant UK earnings, tax relief will be given on contributions up to £3,600 a year (gross).  Relevant UK earnings are basically employed or self-employed earnings that are subject to UK income tax.

If a relevant UK individual does have relevant UK earnings, the maximum tax relievable contribution they can pay is the higher of £3,600 a year and 100% of UK earnings, in the tax year.

Royal London can’t accept new applications from anybody who isn’t habitually resident in the UK. If they’re already a member of a Royal London plan, we can continue to accept contributions at the existing level to that plan up to £3,600 gross (less any contributions they may be making to other pension schemes) for up to 5 tax years after the tax year they left the UK. 
 
Relief at source is the method used to give tax relief on contributions to non-occupational schemes such as personal pensions. There are circumstances in which it could be used with occupational schemes as well but these normally use the net pay arrangement, which we’ll deal with later.   
 
Basic rate tax relief is given by the provider adding basic rate tax relief, currently 20% of the gross contribution to the net contribution and claiming that tax relief from HMRC. So, someone paying a gross contribution of £100 will actually only pay £80 out of their own pocket, with a tax man paying £20.

Since the 20% tax relief is based on the gross contribution, this results in tax relief increasing the net contribution by 25%, as £20 is 25% of £80. 

If someone pays income tax at a higher rate than 20%, they can claim the difference between basic rate and whatever higher rate they're paying via the tax return or by writing to HMRC. 
 
Taxpayers in England, Wales, Northern Ireland can pay tax at 20%, 40% and 45%. In Scotland it can be 19%, 20%, 21%, 42%, 45% and 48%. It's important to remember that under relief at source, any tax relief higher than 20% has to be claimed - it's not given automatically. 
 
However, they can only get this extra tax relief to the extent that they pay tax at this level. In other words, if someone paid tax at 40% on £1,000 in taxable income and paid a gross contribution of £3,000, they'd only get higher rate tax relief on £1,000 of the contribution. 
 
The higher rate tax relief is actually given by extending the basic rate tax band by the amount of the gross contribution. This means that it can also help reduce the tax due on investments such as investment bonds. But that's another story. 
 
Let's have a look example. 
 
If someone has taxable income of £51,270 in the 25/26 tax year, they will be entitled to a personal allowance of £12,570. They therefore won't pay income tax on the first £12,570 of their taxable income in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. 
 
They'll pay tax at the basic rate of 20% on the next £37,700. So basic rate tax will amount to £7,540. On the £1,000 balance of their taxable income. They'll be taxed at a higher rate of 40%, producing a tax amount of £400. The total tax bill will therefore be £7,940. 
 
In Scotland, the bands and rates are different, but the principle is the same. For simplicity, in the  following slides, we won't repeat the calculations to show the situation for Scottish taxpayers. 
 
If they pay an individual contribution of £1,000, their entitlement to tax relief at the higher rate of tax is given by expanding their basic rate tax band by the gross amount.  
 
In this example, the basic rate tax band is increased by £1,000, so it becomes £38,700. The basic rate tax payable on £30,700 now becomes £7,740 and no part of their taxable income is taxed at the higher rate. The total tax bill is now reduced to £7,740 and they've saved £200 in tax. 
 
Remember, the individual has already had £200 of basic rate tax relief at source by paying a net contribution of £800 so they have effectively received tax relief of £400, which is 40% of the gross contribution of £1000. 
In other words, they've had full higher rate tax relief on all of the gross contribution. 
 
If the individual makes a pension contribution of £3,000, the basic rate tax band is again expanded by the gross amount. In this case, the basic rate tax band is expanded from £37,700 to £40,700. Although as the taxable income is only £51,270, basic rate tax will apply to £38,700 of their income. That's £51,270 minus the £12,570.  
 
However, before the contribution was made, the individual was only paying higher rate income tax on the £1,000 income above £50,270. So, they are only entitled to receive the additional higher rate tax relief on £1,000 of their £3,000 pension contribution. This is because only £1,000 of the individual’s taxable income will have been taxed at the higher rate had the pension contribution not being paid. 
 
You can therefore see that the individual’s total tax bill is still £7,740, which is £200 less than if no pension contribution had been paid. However, a further tax savings, £600 will have been received when the individual paid their net contribution of £2,400 (i.e. 80% of £3,000) 
By making a pension contribution of £3,000. The individual has therefore received tax relief of £800 on their contribution, which represents 26.67% of their £3,000 gross contribution. 
 
This is less than 40% because the individual would only have been entitled to higher rate tax relief on £1,000, the amount of taxable income that would have been in the higher rate tax band if no pension contribution had been made. 
 
Another method of claiming tax relief on individual contributions is by net pay. The net pay arrangement is only available to members of occupational schemes.  
 
Under this method, the employer deducts individual contribution from the employee’s salary or pay before deducting income tax. In this way, higher and additional rate taxpayers get immediate tax relief at their marginal rate. 

The individuals don't get any more tax relief than is available under the relief at source method, but they don't have to claim any tax relief through their tax return. It’s received immediately through a reduced taxable income. 
 
It does mean however that, currently, those who don't pay income tax, at least at the level of the member pension contribution, miss out on the tax relief that they would have had if the relief at system was used. However, those in that position receive a top up payment paid directly to them from HMRC.  
 
National Insurance contributions are still based on the pre contribution salary. However only salary sacrifice arrangements escape National Insurance contributions. 
 
Let's look at the annual allowance. 
 
The annual allowance effectively limits the amount of total pension contributions that can be paid into a pension plan without a tax charge applying. The maximum that can be paid by or for an individual within the annual allowance is £60,000 over the tax year. 

Another important point is that the annual allowance isn't a limit per plan - it applies to total pension contributions paid to all plans. 
 
What the annual allowance does is basically cap the tax relief by imposing an annual allowance charge through the individual's tax return. Employer, individual and 3rd party contributions all count towards the annual allowance, but it's the member who's liable for any charge.  
 
As we've seen, the tax relief rules mean that someone with UK earnings of £80,000 in the tax year could pay a gross contribution up to £80,000 over that tax year and get tax relief on that. 
 
If the relief at source system is being used, that means paying a net amount of £64,000, with basic rate tax relief of £16,000 being added by the provider, claimed from HMRC. 
 
Again, as we've seen, further tax relief on the part of the contribution that lies in the higher rate and additional rate tax bands can be claimed through their tax return or by writing to HMRC. 
 
However, although tax relief is given on the gross contribution of £80,000 and annual allowance charges payable on £20,000, that is a pension contribution of £80,000 less the annual allowance of £60,000. 
 
The amount of the charge is at the member’s marginal tax rate and so is designed to remove all tax relief from the excess contributions. 
 
If there is unused annual allowance from the previous three tax years, this can be carried forward to boost the amount of annual allowance available. 
 
Again, we'll look later at how this works. 
 
The pension input amount is the amount paid into the plan or the value of benefits accrued over the tax year that's measured against the annual allowance available for money purchase schemes. 
 
It's very straightforward as the amount of contributions paid over the tax year, whether that be individual contributions, employer contributions, third party contributions or a mix. For defined benefit schemes it’s more complicated and we'll go on to discuss this in the next slide. 

For defined benefits schemes, start by calculating the amount of pension accrued at the beginning of the tax year and multiply it by 16. 

If the tax-free cash builds up separately, as it does in some public sector schemes, add this on. 

Increase this total by the appropriate CPI increase. 

The CPI rate you use is the annual rate for this September before the start of the tax year.

This gives you the adjusted opening value.

Then calculate the accrued pension value at the end of the tax year and multiply it by 16.

Add any tax-free cash that builds up separately. This is the closing value.

Finally, deduct the adjusted opening value from the closing value. 
 
Given the complexity of this calculation and the knowledge of the scheme rules required, it’s safer to rely on a pension saving statement from the scheme. You'll have to request this if the pension input amount for the scheme is less than the annual allowance. You'll have to estimate it for the current year as the scheme won't have this information until the end of the tax year. 
 
However, full details of the calculation can be found in Technical Central in our Annual allowance article. 
 
Now we're going to discuss the money purchase annual allowance. The money purchase annual allowance further restricts the contributions that can be paid to money purchase schemes. 
 
We'll see in a minute what events trigger the money purchase annual allowance, but if it is triggered, the maximum amount that can be paid to money purchase schemes without incurring an annual allowance charge is £10,000 and once triggered, it applies for life. 
 
It operates over the same tax year as the ordinary annual allowance and the amount of the charge is again the individual's marginal rate of income tax. 
 
However, unlike the ordinary annual allowance, carry forward of unused money purchase annual allowance from previous tax years can't be used to boost the amount of money purchase annual allowance available. 
 
As its name suggests, the money purchase annual allowance doesn't affect defined benefit schemes. 
 
There are different scenarios that can trigger the money purchase annual allowance. The most common of these being: 

• taking income from a capped drawdown plan that exceeds the GAD limit, 
• receiving a lump sum from uncrystallized funds i.e. taking an UFPLS, and 
• taking income payments from a flexi access drawdown plan. 
   

The following won’t trigger the money purchase annual allowance.

• taking income from a capped drawdown plan that's within the GAD limit.
• additional fund designation to existing capped drawdown plan.
• receiving a scheme pension from an occupational pension scheme.
• receiving tax-free cash only.
• taking a small pot lump sum.
• trivial commutation under defined benefit scheme, and 
• buying a lifetime annuity.

So to give an example how this works, if John has triggered the money purchase annual allowance and pays contributions to schemes of £9,000, he has £51,000 annual allowance left of which a further £1,000 can be paid to money purchase schemes. 
 
If you paid contributions of £12,000 to money purchase schemes, there will be an annual allowance charge on the £2,000 excess and there will be £50,000 of annual allowance available for pension savings and defined benefit schemes. 
 
Now I'm going to move on to the topic of the tapered annual allowance. 

For 25/26, those with adjusted income of £260,000 or more in the tax year have their annual allowance reduced. The reduction is at the rate of a £1 for every £2 by which adjusted income exceeds £260,000. 
 
The annual allowance can't reduce below £10,000, so anyone with adjusted income of £360,000 or more will have an annual allowance of £10,000. However, the taper doesn't apply where the threshold income is £200,000 or less. 
 
To make sense of all this we obviously need to know what the terms threshold income and adjusted income mean. 
 
The starting point of both terms is taxable income. This can be complicated where individuals are eligible for all sorts of reliefs and allowances and may need the input of their accountant, but for most it's relatively straightforward. It would include things like salary, commission, bonus, overtime, shift allowances, and any taxable investment income they have, including rental income. 
 
From there, you can calculate threshold and adjusted income. The main difference between them being that threshold income includes no pension contributions. Whereas adjusted income includes all pension contributions. 

Some individuals could have relatively low income and relatively high pension contributions.  

HMRC has made clear it's not the intention to restrict the annual allowance for individuals where a relatively high proportion of the adjusted income is made-up of pension contributions. So that is why there is an income floor below which the reduction doesn't apply. This is called the threshold income and it's currently £200,000.

As mentioned, the starting point is taxable income.

You can deduct any tax lump sum death benefits received in the tax year and if a salary sacrifice agreement is set up on or after 9th of July 2015, the employment income given up has to be added back in. 

Individual contributions are usually already included in the taxable income amount. When someone says their salary is £160,000, they don't usually mean that that's the income after pension contributions have been deducted. 

Any gross personal contributions paid, whether by the relief at source system or the net pay arrangement can be deducted. So, an individual could pay more individual pension contributions to a personal pension or additional voluntary contributions to an occupational pension scheme to reduce their threshold income. 
 
If the threshold income isn't exceeded, there's no need to go any further. The taper doesn't apply.  

If it is exceeded, you know you need to go on to look at adjusted income. 
 
For adjusted income, the starting point is again taxable income, but adjusted income includes pension contributions. 
 
As before, individual contributions are usually already included in the taxable income amount, but you also have to add any employer contributions as adjusted income includes all pension contributions. 
 
Finally, if the individual received a tax lump sum death benefit in the tax year, this can be deducted. 
 
If the final amount exceeds £260,000 and the taper applies to this individual, the annual allowance will reduce by a £1 for every £2 excess. 
 
The annual allowance can't however reduce to below £10,000, which means that £10,000 is the reduced annual allowance for everyone with adjusted income of £360,000 or more.

A diagram may make this clearer. 
 
For threshold income, you: 

• deduct gross individual contributions paid, 
• add any employment income given through a salary exchange agreement set up after 8th of July 2015, and 
• deduct any tax lump sum death benefits.

For adjusted income, you: 

• add any employer contributions, and 
• deduct any tax lump sum death benefits.

It's worth noting that the employer contribution for a defined benefit scheme is deemed to be the pension input amount less any member contributions. 
 
Now let's look at example.

Mike has a salary of £270,000 a year and investment income of £10,000 a year. He pays £12,500 a year to his occupational pension scheme under the net pay arrangement and his employer pays £17,500.

Would his annual allowance reduce and if so, to what level?

First, we'll look at Mike's threshold income.

If it's £200,000 or less, his annual allowance won't be reduced. 
 
However, as it stands, his threshold income is his £270,000 salary plus his investment income of £10,000, less his contributions of £12,500, so £267,500. 
 
Although the employer's pension contribution of £17,500 isn't included, he's still well over the limit of £200,000 and it's possible that the tapered annual reduction will apply. 
 
If he paid a net contribution of £54,000, this would be grossed up to £67,500 and would be enough to get it down to the required level. 
 
However, such a payment on top of the existing total employer and member pension contribution of £30,000 would bring pension contributions up to £97,500. 
 
He therefore need at least 37500 of unused annual allowance in carry forward in order to avoid an annual allowance charge.  
Now for his adjusted income. 
 
The £270,000 is Mike's earnings before the deduction of his £12,500 contribution to his occupational pension scheme, so there's no need to add it back in again. 
 
We do, however need to include his £10,000 of investment income and the employer contribution of £17,500. This totals £297,500 which is £37,500 over the £260,000 limit.  
 
His annual allowance will therefore be reduced by half of this and so £18,750 will be deducted from the standard annual allowance of £60,000, resulting in an annual allowance of £41,250. 
 
 
We've seen that individual, employer and 3rd party contributions count towards the annual allowance and that in defined benefit schemes, it’s a value of the benefits accrued over the year. 
 
Any excess of the pension input amount over the annual allowance available attracts that annual allowance charge. It’s the individual that pays the charge though, regardless of the source of the pension input amount. Any excess contribution is added to the individual's taxable income to see what the marginal rate of tax would be on that basis, and this is then the rate of annual allowance charge applied to the excess. 
 
This is all done through the individual's tax return and the aim is to remove the tax relief on the excess contributions. 
 
It's also possible for the individual to pay the charge out of their pension pot, known as scheme pays. If the charge is more than £2,000 and the pension input amount for that pension scheme is more than £60,000, the scheme must apply scheme pays on request. If the conditions aren't met, the scheme can apply scheme pays voluntarily if asked but many schemes don't do this. 
 
And now over to Jim Grant, who's going to talk about some carry forward examples. 
 
Jim Grant

Thank you, Jennifer. 
 
So the aim of this section of CBT is that by the end of this session, you'll know where people go wrong when they're doing carry forward calculations and how to prepare for them. And you'll understand carry forward by working through some case studies. 

So where do they go wrong? 
 
First of all, they get mixed up between annual allowance and tax relief, which hopefully will not happen to you now you've been through this CBT. They forget about the taper or the money purchase annual allowance and that includes in earlier years as well when it might apply. 
 
They don't handle employer contributions or a previous carry forward correctly or they get confused about eligibility for carry forward or as we've seen, they try and do DB (Defined Benefit) calculations for themselves. 
 
 
What do you need in advance for carry forward? 
 
You need to establish the eligibility for carry forward, which is basically that they must have been in a pension scheme in the year you're carrying forward from and you need their current earnings. 
 
You possibly need 22/23, 23/24 and 24/25 as well just to establish whether the taper applied or not. 
 
You'll need the contribution history from at least 22/23 onwards, plus earlier if there's previous carry forward. 
 
And you need a table to record contributions paid and annual allowance used for each tax year. 
 
We don't recommend calculators as these vary in the way in which they display the results and how the input into it is made and we think a table is much clearer. 
 
Here's an example 1. Excuse me for reading this out, it just means that we're all in the same page at the end of it. 
 
So, Sam has his own limited liability company and in 25/26 he'll pay himself a salary of £5,000 and dividends of £100,000. He took out a personal pension plan on 1st of August 2014 and he's been saving £1,200 a month in employer contributions ever since. 
 
He has no other retirement savings and he wants to make a substantial single contribution before the end of the 25/26 tax year. So, he wants to know how much he can contribute without triggering an annual allowance charge. 
 
He hasn't triggered the money purchase annual allowance and the tapered reduction of annual allowance for people with high incomes doesn't apply. 
 
So you see that it’s laid out in the table here where we've got each of the tax years in different lines and the annual allowance applies for that tax year. 
 
So, you can see it was £40,000 in 22/23 before going up to £60,000 for subsequent tax years. 
 
The total contributions are £14,400 and for the purposes of this example, we'll assume that for 25/26 the contributions carried on until it was £14,400 for the entire tax year.

The carry forward remaining therefore in 22/23 is £25,600 which is the £40,000 - £14,400. 
 
In each of the subsequent years the carry forward goes up to £45,600 because the annual allowance obviously went up by £20,000. 
 
So an employer contribution of up to £162,400 can be paid in this tax year without an annual allowance charge applying. 
 
Assuming the wholly and exclusively conditions are met, it will also be eligible for corporation tax relief. 
Number two example, Amy is the finance director of a large manufacturing company earning £230,000 in the 25/26 tax year. 
 
Her employer has been making single contributions into a group personal pension plan for her since the 1st of May 2013. 
 
She hasn't been contributing herself and doesn't have any other retirement savings. 
 
Her employer will make a contribution of £33,400 in 2025/26. 
 
She wants to make a large single contribution herself before the end of the 25/26 tax year. 
 
So she wants to know how much she can contribute without triggering an annual allowance charge. 
 
She hasn't triggered the money purchase annual allowance, but the taper deduction of annual allowance may apply because of her earnings and their employer's pension contribution. It hasn't applied in previous years. 
 
There's the table again. And you can see that the amount of contributions paid giving the carry forward remaining for each of these tax years and adding up to a total of £100,000.

So, if anyone makes an individual gross contribution of £100,000, this will reduce our threshold income to £130,000 which is £230,000 less £100,000 and this means our annual allowance will be £60,000 for 2025/26, as the taper will not apply. 
 
The payment of £100,000 is within her earnings for the tax year and will receive tax relief at her marginal rate. 
Last example, Brian is a partner in an accountancy firm and he'll earn £110,000 in the 25/26 tax year. 
 
He's been making occasional single contributions into a personal pension plan since September 2021. He's already contributed £25,000 in 25/26. He's never been a member of any other pension scheme and now wants to make a substantial further single contribution before the end of the 25/26 tax year. 
 
He wants to know how much he could contribute without triggering an annual allowance charge, and he hasn't triggered the money purchase annual allowance and the tapered reduction of annual allowance for people with high incomes doesn't apply. 
 
OK, so here's the Brian example. Looking slightly more complicated here - so I will slowly go through it. 
 
A total of £45,000 unused annual allowance was available in 2023/24, coming from 2021/22 and 2022/23. The £20,000 excess over the annual allowance that was paid in 2023/24 is therefore covered by the £20,000 carry forward from 2021/22. So the £25,000 carry forward from 2022/23 is still available to be used in 25/26. The £20,000 carry forward from 2021/22 is shown in teal to indicate it's not available for use in 2025/26. 
 
So after paying a single contribution of £25,000 in tax year 25/26, a further individual contribution of up to £80,000 which is £25,000 + £20,000 + £35,000 that could be paid before the end of the tax year without the annual allowance charge applying. 
 
This total contribution is within Brian's earnings so will be eligible for tax relief. 
 
If Brian had had carry forward from 2020/21, that could have been used to partially or completely offset the excess in 23/24. That would mean that more carry forward would be available in 25/26. 
 
If it completely offset the excess, that would have meant another £20,000 of carry forward could be used in 2025/26, getting a further £100,000 that could be paid without an annual allowance charge applying.  This is less than his earnings and so would be eligible for tax relief. 
We've gone over a fair bit of ground here. 
 
The concepts are actually reasonably straightforward, although the practical aspects of them can be complex, especially if an individual is a member of a number of pension schemes or has taper issues in the current tax year and/or previous years. 
 
 
The main points, however, are that: 

• Tax relief on individual contributions and pension input periods operate over the tax year.
• It's possible to pay a contribution against tax relief of which also attracts an annual allowance charge.
• Carry forward can boost the annual allowance available.
• Any annual allowance charge is paid by the individual or they might be able to pay the charge out of their pension pot.
• The money purchase annual allowance can cut contributions to money purchase plans without an annual allowance charge applying, to £10,000 a year.
• High earners can have a taper deduction in their annual allowance. 

And that's it. I hope you found this presentation useful and you now have a better understanding of how tax relief on the annual allowance interact. 
 
A copy of this presentation can be found in the CPD and webinar section of Technical Central. 
 

• The learning outcomes which will have been met are at the end of this session of an understanding of:
• the rules on tax relief and how much is available, 
• the relationship between the annual allowance and tax relief, 
• what triggers the money purchase annual allowance and 
• how to calculate the annual allowance when the taper applies, and also 
• how to calculate unused annual allowance using carry forward. 

Thank you for listening.