Pension Carry Forward Calculator

Daniel is 46 and runs his own management consultancy (see also our self-employed Income Tax calculator). Trading has been strong in 2026/27, and his accountant suggests this is a good year to make a larger pension contribution before 5 April. Daniel's adjusted income has stayed well below £260,000 in every relevant year, so the tapered Annual Allowance doesn't apply to him and he only needs to work through the standard carry forward rules.

Daniel was a member of a registered pension scheme throughout 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26, so all three years' unused allowance is potentially available to him.

Working through the steps, oldest year first:

• Unused allowance from 2023/24: £45,000
• Unused allowance from 2024/25: £40,000
• Unused allowance from 2025/26: £35,000
• Total carried forward: £120,000
• Plus 2026/27's own allowance: £60,000

Maximum Daniel can pay in during 2026/27 without an Annual Allowance charge: £180,000

If Daniel and his company between them pay in £150,000 this year, he's comfortably within the limit. If he paid in £200,000, the £20,000 above £180,000 would be subject to an Annual Allowance charge, reported through his Self Assessment return.

This example is illustrative only, based on the figures shown, and isn't personalised financial advice. Your own position depends on your full income and pension history across all relevant years.

If you're a higher earner, you may have a tapered Annual Allowance rather than the standard £60,000, and this can affect what you're able to carry forward. You're likely to have a tapered allowance in a given tax year if both of the following were true in that year: your threshold income was over £200,000, and your adjusted income was over £260,000.

Where both apply, your Annual Allowance for that year reduces by £1 for every £2 your adjusted income is above £260,000, down to a minimum of £10,000 once adjusted income reaches £360,000.

This matters for carry forward because you need to use the allowance that actually applied to you in each of the three previous years, not automatically assume £60,000. If you were tapered down to, say, £25,000 in 2024/25 and contributed £20,000 that year, you only have £5,000 unused from that year to carry forward, not the £40,000 you'd get by assuming the standard allowance.

A note on terminology: “adjusted income” here is a pension-specific test with its own £260,000 threshold, and it is not the same calculation as “adjusted net income”, the HMRC figure used for the Personal Allowance taper and the High Income Child Benefit Charge, which has a different, lower threshold. The two are easy to confuse because of the similar name. Checking your Personal Allowance or Child Benefit position instead? That uses a related but different HMRC figure called adjusted net income - see our adjusted net income calculator for that separate calculation.

If you've already flexibly accessed a defined contribution pension, for example by taking a taxable income payment through drawdown or an Uncrystallised Funds Pension Lump Sum (UFPLS), the Money Purchase Annual Allowance applies. This is currently £10,000 a year, and it cannot be increased using carry forward from earlier years, even if you have substantial unused standard allowance sitting in the three previous tax years.

Taking just the tax-free 25% lump sum from a pension does not, on its own, trigger the MPAA. It's specifically triggered by taking a taxable income payment.

If you triggered the MPAA partway through the three-year carry forward window, your position becomes genuinely complex: unused standard allowance from years before you triggered it may still be relevant, but the rules around how it interacts with the MPAA are detailed enough that this is worth checking carefully, including with a pension specialist if a large contribution is involved. This calculator flags the situation rather than resolving it precisely.

This page is written and reviewed by Eman Munir, ACCA.

This pension carry forward calculator:

• Only includes a prior year's unused allowance in your carry forward total if you've confirmed you were a member of a qualifying pension scheme that year - membership, not contribution, is what the rules require.
• Tapers each year's Annual Allowance independently, based on the threshold income and adjusted income you enter for that specific year (both tests must be exceeded for tapering to apply), rather than assuming the standard £60,000 for every year.
• Flags the Money Purchase Annual Allowance (£10,000) as a separate limit when you indicate it's been triggered, but can't precisely separate money purchase contributions from other pension input, or fully resolve cases where MPAA was triggered partway through the three-year window - these are flagged as needing a careful check rather than calculated with false precision.
• This year's own allowance is always used before carry forward, and carry forward from the three earlier years is applied oldest first.
• All figures are rounded to the nearest penny.