maxb

As you suspect, dividends are not eligible for this - https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/pensions-tax-manual/ptm044100#earnings

Also, for gains arising from 6th April 2021 onwards, HMRC changed details of how lost Personal Savings Allowance and Starting Rate for Savings interact with top slicing relief - previously they were just lost, now they are accounted for within the calculation in a way which grants back some of the lost tax efficiency as extra top slicing relief. Reference: https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/insurance-policyholder-taxation-manual/iptm3820 So if you have example calculations, they'll differ depending on which year's rules they are demonstrating.

But that's for penalties... Exceeding the Annual Allowance doesn't incur a penalty, it just creates liability to pay the appropriate tax. It would be surprising if the tax was not held to be payable in full once figures became available, no?

@Bob Ball: I agree with your maths and logic in your post several above this one. (Your latest post is still concealed pending moderation as I post this.)

Is there any possibility you were affected by high income reduction of the personal allowance (to zero) in those years - either obviously or non-obviously through interactions with the calculation of top slicing relief on an investment bond? I'm not saying HMRC couldn't make a mistake, but the personal allowance would be an incredibly routine thing to just forget about... If HMRC did truly make a mistake, those tax years are so long ago, they could probably deny a claim based on it being out of time. I don't have any specialist knowledge about that beyond what I just learned via Google, but it doesn't look particularly promising.

@HMRC Admin 25 Your first sentence says "no relief will be given" but I know from personal experience that a pension provider will generally have no knowledge of the member's relevant earnings, instead relying on the member having agreed to not make excess contributions, and so it is very possible relief will be given - even when it is not due and shouldn't be, and needs to be returned. The rest of your reply is about the Annual Allowance, not the relevant earnings test, and thus inapplicable to the situation here.

Try this to start: https://www.gov.uk/check-additional-income-tax If it says you need to register for Self Assessment, then https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns/who-must-send-a-tax-return says: > You must send a tax return if, in the last tax year (6 April to 5 April), any of the following applied: ... you were self-employed as a ‘sole trader’ and earned more than £1,000 (before taking off anything you can claim tax relief on) and > You must tell HMRC by 5 October if you need to complete a tax return and have not sent one before. You can tell HMRC by registering for Self Assessment. I'm guessing you are referring to earnings the tax year from 6th April 2024 to 5th April 2025 ? In which case 5th October 2025 seems to be the deadline.

No, the legislation does not permit any carry forward/back of this allowance.

@HMRC Admin 17 Nothing in PTM041000 explicitly clarifies the tax treatment when a pension scheme shows the original payment and the associated tax relief arriving into the pension on different days, in different tax years, though. Answers on this forum have clarified, but neither PTM041000 nor any other document I have managed to find serves as a simple citation to reference on the matter. The closest I can find is FA 2004 s. 192(3)(b) "When the payment of the contribution is received any amount so recovered is to be treated for the purposes of the Tax Acts in the same manner as the payment of the contribution." speaking to a certain amount of indivisibility between the original sum paid and the relief reclaimed, but there is still room for ambiguity in whether "same manner" encompasses "same tax year" or not.

I could be wrong, I'm not a professional, but as far as I can see, the rules surrounding this particular limit seem to be phrased in terms of relief obtained, not total contributions. I'm happy to be corrected if you have a citation to the contrary!