High Income & BTL - Pay into Pension?

[johnwilliams79]

Hi,
Hope someone can help me, I basically have two questions.

I earn about 103k PAYE from my employer
I also have a couple of buy to lets shared with my wife which which give me an profit today of about £3k but as the changes to mortgage tax relief kick in, this will double.
so in total I'm looking at 106k, maybe up to 110k

I havent really thought about this until now so just trying to get my head around it.

Questions

1) for 2016-2017 my income from work and BTLs it about £107k. the year has already passed but can i back pay into my pension before i do my self assessment? I'm thinking that if i can pay £7k then i'll be back to 100k and not lose my personal allowance.

2) any ideas on reducing the tax beyond paying anything over 100k into my pension? thought about changing ownership of the BTLs into my wife's name

Help

Thanks very much in advance.

[Lambs]

J,

You cannot now backdate a pension contribution to 2016/17. Only in-year contributions can now be made. The only thing that can be carried back now (apart from losses and some high-risk investments - EIS / SEIS) is Gift Aid type charitable donations. They would have a similar effect on your 2016/17 tax bill to pension contributions, but you would not feel the long-term benefit (of an increase in your investment fund).

Charitable donations may be carried back but the donations must be made before you fill in your tax 2016/17 tax return and the claim to carry back must be made in the first version you submit - i.e., you cannot amend your 2016/17 tax return with a later version that incorporates a claim to carry back the donation to 2016/17. Some very strange rules for something you would expect the government to want to be as helpful as possible, but for more information, see

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... iving-2017

You could perhaps look at EIS / SEIS investments but I am not qualified to give financial advice.

Regards,

Lambs