Self assessment - Incorrect Personal Allowance used to calculate my tax for 2023/24?

C4rlos12345678

Good Afternoon

Hoping someone can help me please.

While completing my 2023/24 self-assessment online, I noticed my correct personal tax code for 2023/24 (1384L) was not being used for my tax calculation. It uses the default - 1257L.

This increase in Personal Allowance was due to Pension tax relief from a previous year (as I am a higher tax payer). And it was increased to that in November 2023

As far as I can see, there is no way I can change this to 1384L.

How can I factor this in please so that my tax gets calculated correctly?

Is it ok if I add the difference i.e £1270 (13840 – 12570) to the pensions section (Box 1)? This seems to give me the expected tax amount when I do this and recalculate

Many thanks

molerat

Your personal allowance can only be £12570.  The additional amounts added to your tax code are simply to try and deduct the correct amount of tax from your PAYE income.  As long as you put the correct gross pension amount in the appropriate SA box it will all work out correctly.

C4rlos12345678

Thanks for the prompt reply Molerat.

So to confirm,  if for 23/24, I made total Pension Contributions of £5000 (which includes basic tax relief), I just put this into Box 1? What you are saying is the 1384L has already being used to calculate my PAYE income for 2023/24 so is irrelevant at this point

Dazed_and_C0nfused

C4rlos12345678 said:

Thanks for the prompt reply Molerat.

So to confirm,  if for 23/24, I made total Pension Contributions of £5000 (which includes basic tax relief), I just put this into Box 1? What you are saying is the 1384L has already being used to calculate my PAYE income for 2023/24 so is irrelevant at this point

Yes, your tax code is of no relevance to your Self Assessment return.

Tax code are only ever a provisional attempt to collect some tax.

Your Self Assessment return establishes the correct position and determines how much tax you really owe (or are owed back).

This comment is a little odd though as HMRC never allow pension tax for one year via the tax code of a different year.

This increase in Personal Allowance was due to Pension tax relief from a previous year (as I am a higher tax payer). And it was increased to that in November 2023

You have either misunderstood your tax code or will owe some tax as you would only ever include RAS contributions made in 2023-24 on your 2023-24 tax return.

C4rlos12345678

Dazed_and_C0nfused Thanks a lot for this. And yes, I completely misunderstood the tax code lol

Thinking about it with a clearer head due to both your explanations, my tax code started as 1257L then got changed to 1034T for some months (due to HMRC estimating my projected income as over £100000 for the year), then to 1384L when I started Salary sacrifice. 

So I have only added my RAS contributions (inc 20% Tax relief) into Box 1

Many thanks again. Molerat and D and C. Much appreciated