Pension - Employer Contributions only !!

Stevep44

I have a workplace pension fund from a previous employer.

I was certainly in the 40% tax bracket, so should be able to claim additional tax rebate from the Government. However the Gov say I am not eligible.

My problem is that my payslips, and the information on the pension website show that the contributions to the pension are ONLY employer contributions.

This is certainly incorrect, since the employer was paying a nominal amount (matching my contribution up to 8%), but I had arranged to pay approx. 28%, .

Can this be corrected ?

El_Torro

It's likely that you were paying pension contributions through salary sacrifice. Technically this means that you don't pay any pension contributions yourself, your employer reduces your salary by the agreed amount and all the contributions are from them. In practice this means that the contributions go into your pension before they are taxed, so there is no tax to be refunded to you.

Salary sacrifice is the most tax efficient way to pay into your employer's pension scheme, though not all employers offer it.

Exodi

As above, sounds like salary sacrifice.

Stevep44

I was certainly in the 40% tax bracket, so should be able to claim additional tax rebate from the Government.

You're only entitled to claim tax relief if the money was taxable on the way in. If you contributed via a salary sacrifice or net pay arrangement (where your contribution is made before any tax is calculated), then no tax was paid so no tax relief is due.

Stevep44

My problem is that my payslips, and the information on the pension website show that the contributions to the pension are ONLY employer contributions.

Salary sacrifice contributions are considered entirely as employer contributions.

Stevep44

This is certainly incorrect, since the employer was paying a nominal amount (matching my contribution up to 8%), but I had arranged to pay approx. 28%, .

Can this be corrected ?

As above, not certainly incorrect - and if it is the case you made these contributions were made before tax (so there is no tax relief due) then there is nothing to correct.

In case you feel hard done by, salary sacrifice is the crème de la crème of pension arrangements - it avoids NI (which normal relief at source schemes do not) and doesn't require you to have to manually claim higher rate tax relief via self assessment.

Marcon

Easy enough to check, given you still have payslips. Look at the gross pay for a month - shouldn't be difficult to spot if that's 28% less than one-twelfth of your annual salary. If it is, you were in a salary sacrifice arrangement and have already had full tax relief at your highest rate.

Paul_Herring

My problem is that my payslips, and the information on the pension website show that the contributions to the pension are ONLY employer contributions.

That sounds, as others have said, like Salary Sacrifice in which case

• you don't actually get paid what you've sacrifice. This means
• your employer puts the equivilant amount (along with their percentage) into the fund. So not only technically, but actually, they are making the entire contribution. You never had the money to contribute in the first place.
• it also means that since you didn't get it, you weren't taxed on it. You have no relief to claim because you didn't pay tax.

Double check the gross amount on your payslips and confirm that it is less than your contracted (pre-sacrifice) gross salary. If it's less, the above applies.