£60,000 a year pension cap

QrizB

Am still no wiser though if I can contribute more to make up for the previous 2 years

No you can't. You can only make contributions for the current tax year.

or even pay in from savings

Yes you can, but still only for the current tax year.

DRS1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81906747#Comment_81906747

Ok. Without knowing the figures is it possible that sometime after August 2024 the method of contributing changed? Do the current employer contributions look like they are the employer contributions shown on your payslips? Or do they look like the employer contributions and employee contributions added together? If the second then your employer may have switched you over to salary sacrifice (as @Dazed_and_C0nfused suggested up above). That would make a difference to how much you could now contribute as personal contributions to the pension scheme.

I thought we had clarified for you that you cannot make contributions THIS tax year that make use of your earnings figures for PREVIOUS tax years. You're limited to tax relief on personal contributions up to your taxable pay for this tax year.

I think you are going to need to call the pension provider to ask them how they would treat a lump sum personal contribution from you to the pension. If the scheme is now a salary sacrifice scheme it may not be geared to accepting lump sum personal contributions. Either it may not accept them at all or it may not claim the tax relief on them. You want to make sure they will both accept the contribution and claim the basic rate tax relief. If not then you need to set up your own personal pension scheme and contribute to that.

Finally you ask about the tax treatment of money coming out of the pension. As you say with a personal pension scheme or other DC scheme the basic rule is 25% can be taken as tax free cash and the remaining 75% can be drawn as taxable income. Whether the taxable income is actually taxed depends on your income in a tax year. If your ALL your taxable income (including savings interest from non ISAs, earned income, the state pension and so on) is below the personal allowance then your tax rate is 0%. Some people on here seem to manage to achieve that. Of course once the state pension starts that will use up most if not all of your personal allowance so some people try to get as much as they can out of their personal pension before the state pension starts. That only makes sense though if they are not earning anything for a few years before state pension age.

Grumpy_chap

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81906753#Comment_81906753

And only up to the limit of earned income this year.