Pension contributions in a partnership.

[spoyalloy]

My wife and myself are in business in a partnership, just the two of us. We both work equally at the partnership and have been dividing the income between us as our sole income. We formerly had a Scottish Widows private pension each, and we made contributions with tax relief at source. Those contributions were duly declared on SA100 and we properly obtained an increase in the 'basic rate limit' to minimise the eventual tax payment. I could see how that worked on the tax calculation.
But we have moved to a new private pension with LV=, with the Flexible Transitions Account. Now the new contributions are being made as employer contributions on a gross basis.
For the life of me I can't work out where to claim for these new contributions to get the tax benefit! The SA100 specifically says to not include payments made to employer's pensions scheme before tax - so I reasoned that the pension contributions might be a business cost to go in the partnership tax return (SA800). It seemed that box 3.51 would be the place, but the HMRC guide on that is contradictory: and it really is not clear if the partner's own pension contributions should be included. I really do like to know how things work, but I am a bit stuck here. How do I get the tax benefit of these employer's contributions? Is this going to be hard?
Paul

[bd6759]

You are not an empoyee and the partneship is not your employer. You need to go back to LV to sort this out.

[LozaACCS]

it does appear that the arrangement has not been thought through properly.
You cannot claim relief personally for employer contributions, whilst it is possible for a partner to be taxed as an employee, I cannot see any basis on which it would apply in this case. (I assume it is not an LLP), so I agree that the contributions are most unlikely to be employer contributions, it would be interesting to know on what basis you believe (or have been told) that they are employer contributions)

[spoyalloy]

thank you, bd6759 & LozaACCA. The new pension had been arranged through an IFA and I have fixed to see him on Friday. I will let you know outcome: your responses indicate that either something is seriously wrong or that I have seriously misunderstood something else.