UKC

I’m a contractor but get paid via an agency (PAYE) which doesn’t allow me to pay into a private pension.

I have been paying into one from my Net Pay and now need to reclaim tax from contributions which were over the higher rate tax bracket.

Is the easiest way to do this registering for a self assessment, and then submitting a self assessment? I just have income and pension contributions, so nothing complicated like dividends, interest etc to worry about.

If so, are the forms simple to complete or is it worth having an accountant file one for me?

Or is there a simpler way to do this?

I think doing the self assessment form yourself would be the way forward. Just take your time and google things you don't understand.

One of the first parts of the form will ask you "did you do think thing you've never heard of and don't know what it means". After a quick google, you realise it's not relevant to you, so you click no, and then the form gets much smaller and will then be limited to your pension contribution bit.

Bits that nearly caught me out.

When you enter the amount you paid into your pension, divide it by 0.8 if you paid into a SIPP, as it explains in the instructions it wants the amount paid into the SIPP, not what you paid in. I,e, include the government 20% top up.

It then asks you to enter it again using similar wording and it took me a while to work out what the difference was. In a nut shell, it's trying to establish if the amount you paid into the SIPP is a one off payment or a regular payment. If regular, they may adjust your tax code.

I entered the same value again as I want my tax code to remain unchanged.

The rest of it was straight forward and probably only took 20 minutes.

Thank you - I’ll go down that route. It is like the be the case for the next few tax years so I might as well get used to the forms now.

I actually have some from an accountant when I had a limited company, so I can probably look at what was done then to check my entries against.

It's easy to do by self assessment. You can google it and loads of people will have done the same. You only need to do it once or twice, then it should carry over into the next year & HMRC will tell you that you don't need to do self assessment anymore.

Not sure I follow this. If SIPP payments vary form year to year, as they likely will, then the only way to pay the right amount of tax is to do the form every year.

Yes of course (if your payments vary). I assumed that your payments would be the same each month

Got it, ta