40% Tax question

jem16

tebow wrote: »

so essentially if my NHS salary was going to be 45k, and the tax threshold was 41k, I could choose to pay 4k into my pension, for example monthly through PAYE, thus not paying 40% tax (£1600) on the 4k, and receiving the benefits of having had increased pension contribution by 4k for essentially a real-terms total cost of £2400 or even less when NI and student loan is factored into that (not sure of how much that would be though this is where my knowledge/guessing ends!). - Is that right?

Ni won't be affected as it's calculated on gross pay. Don't know about student loan.