Universal credit and private pension contributions

spaniel101

"...my partner is a full time carer for our daughter"

With no relevant Earned Income, your partner will be subject to the maximum £2880net/£3600 gross pension contribution each financial year.


"...The situation with TCs was that, as it was a joint claim, apparently it didn't matter whose earnings the pension deductions were made from, as the net result would be the same".

It does matter, if your partner had no relevant Earned Income, then your partner could not contribute more than £2880net/£3600 gross and equally, you could not contribute more than 100% gross annual salary to your pension.


UC will attribute/deduct any personal pension contributions made, directly to the Individuals 'Earned Income' for the purpose of calculating UC entitlement.   If your partner does not have any 'Earned Income' to be deducted from, then there is no attribution to be made.   

UC will not allow you, to deduct your partners pension contributions, from your own 'Earned Income', only your own personal pension contributions. 


Therefore UC will not be interested in your partners personal pension contributions.   

 

spaniel101

"...As a hangover form being self employed, I still get asked by UC every month to enter figures for my self employed earnings and expenses. I am wondering if we are allowed to simply enter payments into my partner's pension in there, as there seems to be no mechanism for doing it through my partner's UC profile."


As a side note, DO NOT DO THIS!   
You will open up a whole other can of worms you wished you never had.   


If you are no longer self employed personally, you need to make it VERY clear to UC that this needs cancelling asap.

spaniel101

"...As a hangover form being self employed, I still get asked by UC every month to enter figures for my self employed earnings and expenses. I am wondering if we are allowed to simply enter payments into my partner's pension in there, as there seems to be no mechanism for doing it through my partner's UC profile."


As a side note, DO NOT DO THIS!   
You will open up a whole other can of worms you wished you never had.   


If you are no longer self employed personally, you need to make it VERY clear to UC that this needs cancelling asap.

justwhat

spaniel101 said:

"...my partner is a full time carer for our daughter"

With no relevant Earned Income, your partner will be subject to the maximum £2880net/£3600 gross pension contribution each financial year.


"...The situation with TCs was that, as it was a joint claim, apparently it didn't matter whose earnings the pension deductions were made from, as the net result would be the same".

It does matter, if your partner had no relevant Earned Income, then your partner could not contribute more than £2880net/£3600 gross and equally, you could not contribute more than 100% gross annual salary to your pension.



 

Is that actually the case?
My understanding is you can contribute more than 100% if earnings or £3600 gross if low / no income. But  you will not get tax relief over  certain thresholds?

And UC ignores those thresholds for calculations of the claim.

@P68696c You may be better upping your pension contributions to maximize your UC claim. ( you would have to do the math)

Dazed_and_C0nfused

justwhat said:

spaniel101 said:

"...my partner is a full time carer for our daughter"

With no relevant Earned Income, your partner will be subject to the maximum £2880net/£3600 gross pension contribution each financial year.


"...The situation with TCs was that, as it was a joint claim, apparently it didn't matter whose earnings the pension deductions were made from, as the net result would be the same".

It does matter, if your partner had no relevant Earned Income, then your partner could not contribute more than £2880net/£3600 gross and equally, you could not contribute more than 100% gross annual salary to your pension.



 

Is that actually the case?
My understanding is you can contribute more than 100% if earnings or £3600 gross if low / no income. But  you will not get tax relief over  certain thresholds?

And UC ignores those thresholds for calculations of the claim.

@P68696c You may be better upping your pension contributions to maximize your UC claim. ( you would have to do the math)

That is true, but it rarely makes sense financially.

As you are turning an amount which received no tax relief into something that becomes 75% taxable income on the way out of the pension.

michaels

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

justwhat said:

spaniel101 said:

"...my partner is a full time carer for our daughter"

With no relevant Earned Income, your partner will be subject to the maximum £2880net/£3600 gross pension contribution each financial year.


"...The situation with TCs was that, as it was a joint claim, apparently it didn't matter whose earnings the pension deductions were made from, as the net result would be the same".

It does matter, if your partner had no relevant Earned Income, then your partner could not contribute more than £2880net/£3600 gross and equally, you could not contribute more than 100% gross annual salary to your pension.



 

Is that actually the case?
My understanding is you can contribute more than 100% if earnings or £3600 gross if low / no income. But  you will not get tax relief over  certain thresholds?

And UC ignores those thresholds for calculations of the claim.

@P68696c You may be better upping your pension contributions to maximize your UC claim. ( you would have to do the math)

That is true, but it rarely makes sense financially.

As you are turning an amount which received no tax relief into something that becomes 75% taxable income on the way out of the pension.

It might have made sense especially if it was to be drawdown as part of personal allowance and it was deduced from income in the TC assessment.

justwhat

That is true, but it rarely makes sense financially.

As you are turning an amount which received no tax relief into something that becomes 75% taxable income on the way out of the pension.

Maybe lol  Putting into pension may still be a good idea. As you may gain 55p in the pound from UC claim lol 

spaniel101

In terms of UC, contributing more than 100% salary into your pension wouldn't see any additional gain in UC calculation.

Equally, net monthly contributions, leaving your Earned income below the 'work allowance', also wouldn't see any further UC financial gain, only from that which is above it.
  

Spoonie_Turtle

UC disregards 'all relievable contributions', so anything above the threshold would not be disregarded - although as mentioned above if you're putting in extra on top of your salary it would make no difference to the UC calculation anyway.

P68696c

Thank you all for your responses. That is very helpful and I will certainly be acting on (or refraining from certain actions based on) some of that advice.

The main point we are trying to answer, though, is if/how my partner's pension contributions can be taken into account.

Increasing my pension contributions would not achieve what we want because, although it may have the same net effect on the UC award received, the money would then be in my pension not may partner's.

All we want to do is have her pension contributions fairly taken into the calculation of the net household income being reported on our joint claim, in the same way it was when we were on Tax Credits.

Does anyone know if it is at all possible to do this with UC?

Thanks again