Pension limit - really 100% salary?

chucknorris

ThinkingOutLoud wrote: »

True Chuck, although if the OP has under-contributed in prior years, he can use money from any source to make up his cash input to the "relevant permitted maximum contributions". i.e. he can use other income to make back contributions not to calculate his total "salary".

If you are carrying forward unused annual allowance, you still are capped by relevant earnings in that particular tax year that you are actually contributing, if you want to claim the tax relief.

ThinkingOutLoud_2

chucknorris wrote: »

If you are carrying forward unused annual allowance, you still are capped by relevant earnings in that particular tax year that you are actually contributing, if you want to claim the tax relief.

We agree. That was what I meant by ""relevant permitted maximum contributions".

I think my post and Clifford's were because we were not sure the OP would get clearly get your point rather than any disagreement.

chucknorris

ThinkingOutLoud wrote: »

We agree. That was what I meant by ""relevant permitted maximum contributions".

I think my post and Clifford's were because we were not sure the OP would get clearly get your point rather than any disagreement.

Ah, I see, not so much you, but I thought Clifford was just having a go for the sake of it.

Triumph13

I'm just amazed that there is a circumstance where £128k pa of personal income could be accurately termed irrelevant!

chucknorris

Triumph13 wrote: »

I'm just amazed that there is a circumstance where £128k pa of personal income could be accurately termed irrelevant!

I think I can understand why, after all, the pension tax relief is a subsidy that is supposed to be helping fund eventual retirement. As much as I would like to use investment income to gain further tax relief, I can fully understand the Gov taking the line that anyone with significant investment income, does not need to be subsidised to fund their retirement.

MoneySavingUser

As others have pointed out:

You are misunderstanding how this works. I expect the change in your take home pay is because you are paying more into the scheme than before (i.e. some of your NI saving is also going in) rather than you are only saving £10.

Please post some actual numbers of what you mean.

(as an aside I think by optout the OP means opt out of SS not the pension scheme itself).

What you need to do is:

1.Salary sacrifice down to the minimum wage which is usually for someone who works 7.5 hours a day

260 working days * 7.5 hours * the nmw for your age range

2. Pay 80% of anything left over into a SIPP or a personal pension

AlanP_2

Before you pay anything below Minimum Wage into a SIPP consider your Tax Allowance of £11k (£11.5k) from next month.

Is it worth paying everything into a SIPP to get 20% tax relief only to draw it out later and pay 20% tax on it?

May not be relevant to the OP but just in case.

jamesd

The 25% tax free lump sum provides the benefit in that case.

ThinkingOutLoud_2

AlanP wrote: »

Is it worth paying everything into a SIPP to get 20% tax relief only to draw it out later and pay 20% tax on it?

I note your caveat.

As James D says - only 75% the money coming out will taxable. So that is a 5% kickback.

Plus, it looks like the OP is now contributing a lot to retire early, but didn't necessarily contribute more than the scheme minimum before (assumption not fact).

If so and his salary is only now 40k - we might wonder if his sustainable drawdown pension will amount to over 11.5k, especially as taken early. If not, then he won't be paying tax on any of the drawdown and hopefully can use savings to supplement until state pension arrives to help.

System

chucknorris wrote: »

Ah, I see, not so much you, but I thought Clifford was just having a go for the sake of it.

Just for sake of clarifying something that appeared to be worded a bit ambiguously.

In other areas of pension law, the actual source of the funding is critical, eg with recycling.