Current year
Used to check the 100% earnings cap
All contributions including employer and tax relief
Previous three tax years
Include all contributions: employee, employer, and tax relief added by HMRC
Annual allowance: £40,000
Annual allowance: £60,000
Annual allowance: £60,000
Your circumstances
This tool is for illustration only. Tax rules are complex and your personal circumstances may differ. Always confirm figures with HMRC or a qualified tax adviser before acting.
Carry-forward lets you use unused annual allowance from the three previous tax years to make a pension contribution larger than the current year's limit. The annual allowance for 2024/25 and 2025/26 is £60,000. For 2023/24 it was also £60,000. For 2022/23 it was £40,000.
You can only carry forward from the three tax years immediately before the current year. Unused allowance doesn't accumulate indefinitely — allowance from 2021/22 fell away at the start of 2025/26. Current year allowance is always used first; carry-forward fills any remaining gap. You must have been a member of a registered pension scheme in each year you want to carry forward from.
The annual allowance covers total pension input — your own contributions, employer contributions, and any in-kind additions. For defined benefit schemes, the pension input amount is calculated differently (based on the increase in accrued benefit, multiplied by 16). This tool assumes defined contribution pensions where the input amount equals cash contributed.
You can only claim tax relief on contributions up to 100% of your UK earnings in the tax year, regardless of how much carry-forward is available. If you earn £40,000 this year, the effective maximum contribution (with full tax relief) is £40,000 — even if your carry-forward entitlement is higher.
If you have flexibly accessed your pension — for example, by drawing from a flexi-access drawdown fund or taking an uncrystallised funds pension lump sum — your money purchase annual allowance drops to £10,000 and carry-forward cannot be used to increase it. The MPAA applies to money purchase contributions only; defined benefit accrual has a separate alternative annual allowance.
High earners face a tapered annual allowance. For 2025/26, if both your threshold income (all income excluding pension contributions) exceeds £200,000 and your adjusted income (including employer contributions) exceeds £260,000, your allowance reduces by £1 for every £2 of adjusted income above £260,000, down to a minimum of £10,000. Carry-forward can still be used, but only against the tapered figure, not the standard £60,000.
Carry-forward is most valuable to people who had a low-contribution year — career break, maternity leave, business income volatility — and now want to make a larger one-off payment. It's also used by business owners extracting profits via employer contributions, and by those approaching retirement wanting to maximise tax-sheltered savings before drawing down.