What happens if I put too much into my private pension?

[dowles]

Hi

What happens if you overpay into your private pension. For example let's assume you anticipate an income of £20,000 for the current tax year which would enable you to contribute £16,000 to a private pension and receive tax relief of £4,000. Now let's assume you made the entire contribution of £16.000 on 5 April 2016 and then subsequently something went wrong and by the end of that tax year you had only actually earned £10,000 so could only have contributed £8,000 to the pension. What happens here - do you pay the additional £2,000 back via your tax return? does the additional £8,000 remain in your pension or does it have to come back out?

Thanks

[LozaACCS]

It is normally collected through the tax return, alternatively the Scheme administrator can be asked to pay it, the original contribution is not affected

[dowles]

Thanks that makes sense