Civil service- EPA and annual allowance

Tangerinesushi

Hello

Can anyone confirm whether my understanding of EPA is correct? I'm in Alpha and at the moment am buying extra DB pension and paying AVCs. This has taken me over my annual allowance but it's ok this year as I have some allowance to carry forward.

However, from next tax year I won't have any allowance to carry forward. I understand that if I switch from buying extra pension to EPA -2 (the most I can do as my SPA is 67), the additional cost of building my EPA -2 (as opposed to ordinary Alpha) does not count towards my annual allowance.

Have I understood this correctly? Also am I right in thinking that I can't buy extra pension and EPA- it has to be one or the other in a given year?

Thanks very much for any help.

hugheskevi

You are correct that EPA does not generate a pension input, and so does not count toward Annual Allowance.

You are incorrect in thinking you cannot buy extra pension and EPA, you can do both in the same year, subject to a limit on the total amount that is shared across Added Pension and EPA.

Universidad

hugheskevi said:

you can do both in the same year, subject to a limit on the total amount that is shared across Added Pension and EPA.

Can vouch for this, I've done both at once. 

I was paying in quite a lot into Added Pension, but I was quite surprised when I ran through some of the online calculators how high the percentage of my Added Pension limit was taken up by the EPA payments.

My understanding is that there's no bar on buying EPA provided you're still under that Added Pension limit, even if only by a tiny amount. 

But I suppose it could lead to situations in which you can't do both any more.