Pension Relief Calculator

Calculate how much tax relief your pension provider should get you. And see how much additional tax relief you can claim from HMRC.

Tax Year: 2024/25

What pension scheme is your employer using?
Net pay Relief at source

If your employer is using a net pay or salary sacrifice scheme, then you don’t need to worry about needing to do a tax return in order to claim your relief.

Your contributions are already made before any tax is calculated, so your overall taxable income is reduced as a result.

You don’t need to do anything.

NOTE: Your results will not be saved. This calculator should be used for estimations, capital gains is complicated with potential reliefs available, please get in touch if you have any queries.

What is the Private Pension Tax Relief?

First things first, what’s a private pension? It’s basically a savings scheme that you pay into for when you retire. However, unlike the state pension which you pay into automatically through National Insurance when you’re employed, you set up a private pension, also called a personal pension, independently of this.

Having a private pension is especially important for anyone who is self-employed and may only be relying on their state pension for retirement income. Check out our guide on the top pension hacks for freelancers for more on this.

When you pay into a private pension, the government will pay you the tax you paid on your contribution in the form of a tax relief.

Who can claim

To be eligible to claim tax relief you must be:

a basic rate taxpayer that pays into a workplace pension but the employer does not or will no longer claim tax relief
a basic rate taxpayer that pays a lump sum into a personal or workplace pension that is not under a net pay scheme
an intermediate rate taxpayer or a higher rate taxpayer that pays into a personal or workplace pension

What you’ll need

To claim tax relief on your personal and workplace pension payments, you’ll need to know:

your National Insurance number
the type of pension
the name of the pension provider
the net amount of pension contributions for each tax year you’re claiming for
your payroll number or reference number

You’ll need to upload or send proof from your pension provider of payments made for each tax year you’re claiming for, where any of the following apply: