In recent days, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has been forced to remove a popular online calculator from its website, after it emerged that the software was giving users \u201cincorrect\u201d information about how much money they can save into their pensions.<\/p>\n
Under existing pension rules, pension contributions of up to \u00a340,000 made by standard rate taxpayers will qualify for tax relief, but higher earners will face a reduced allowance \u2013 which could be as low as \u00a310,000 a year for people on the highest incomes.<\/p>\n
Despite this, taxpayers are entitled to \u2018carry forward\u2019 any annual allowances from up to three years if these have not previously been used.<\/p>\n
However, HMRC\u2019s online calculator has been \u201cdrastically underestimating\u201d the amount of money people can save into their pensions, a report in The Telegraph<\/em> reveals.<\/p>\n In many cases, the calculator\u2019s errors have related to the rules governing \u2018carry forward\u2019 allowances and confusion stemming from tax changes introduced in April 2016, which saw individuals earning between \u00a3150,000 and \u00a3210,000 subjected to a new, tapered allowance.<\/p>\n According to reports, HMRC\u2019s calculator was coming up with the wrong figures for the 2017\/18 and 2018\/19 tax years due to its failure to take such matters into account.<\/p>\n Former pensions minister Steve Webb described the errors as \u201ctotally unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s beyond belief that they are knowingly allowing taxpayers to get incorrect information from their website and potentially to make major financial decisions on the strength of dodgy data,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Following the concerns raised, HMRC has removed the tool from its website and apologised for the technical issues with its software.<\/p>\n On Wednesday 18 April 2018, an HMRC spokesperson said: \u201cWe are sorry that the calculator isn\u2019t working as it should in some cases. The calculator is no longer available as it is being updated.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, HMRC is advising individuals to manually calculate their annual pension allowance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In recent days, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has been forced to remove a popular online calculator from its website, after it emerged that the software was giving users \u201cincorrect\u201d information about how much money they can save into their pensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2419,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions\/2419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}