Pensions, higher rate tax and car allowance

YellowStarling

OP, are you aged below 40? If you’ve optimised your tax strategy with Sal sac pension contributions, which it sounds as though you’ve gone as far as your employer’s odd stance*** will allow you to, but are still in the retirement planning mood, then you might do well to look at S&S LISAs. Plenty of info on these forums if you search but (and there are nuances of course) these tend to be tax neutral on input when you’ve optimised pension contributions like you have but offer some useful flexibility on output when retired (ie tax free), though there are bankruptcy considerations to them I won’t go into here.

But also agree that S&S ISAs are good to have too as - though I concur with the poster above that they should not be considered savings - they are accessible at any point if really needed (insert usual emergency liquid savings buffer recommendation here).

***as others have mentioned, there are benefits to your employer of a change in their stance too. What hasn’t been mentioned though is that many employers then actually share this benefit (of reduced employers’ NI contributions) back with the employee as a pension contribution uplift (usually 50% of their 13.8% contribution). So you’re actually missing out two-fold and it’s costing your employer 6.9-13.8% of your AVC.