Your client’s pension savings statement: reading it for carry forward

Pension savings statements are due by 6 October after the end of each tax year. For an adviser or paraplanner they are the source for a carry-forward check: each gives a scheme's pension input amounts, the figures the annual allowance is measured against. This guide covers what a statement shows, when a scheme has to send one, and how the years on a statement turn into a carry-forward figure. The rules of carry forward itself, including the taper and the money purchase annual allowance, are in carry forward of unused annual allowance.

What the statement shows

HMRC's manual at PTM167200 lists the contents. A standard statement gives the total of the member's pension input amounts under the scheme's arrangements for the tax year and the annual allowance for that year, and the same two figures for each of the three previous tax years. Four years of inputs on one page is what makes the statement useful for carry forward, which looks back three years.

Where the member has flexibly accessed a money purchase pension, the statement is a money purchase version. It splits money purchase inputs from the rest and shows the alternative annual allowance, the allowance for the other inputs when money purchase inputs are more than the money purchase annual allowance. How that interacts with carry forward is in MPAA and carry forward.

Two limits follow from what the statement is. It covers one scheme only, so a client with several schemes has several statements, and the inputs have to be added. And it is not a taper calculation: the automatic trigger ignores the tapered annual allowance, and the taper depends on the client's threshold income and adjusted income, which are not figures a scheme holds.

Why a fund value is not a pension input amount

For a money purchase arrangement other than cash balance, PTM053200 puts it plainly: the pension input amount is simply the total of contributions paid into the arrangement during the pension input period. That covers the member's own contributions (gross of tax relief), contributions paid on the member's behalf and employer contributions. It excludes investment growth. So the pot value on an annual benefit statement, or the change in it over the year, is not a pension input amount, and a carry-forward check built from valuations can be wrong in either direction: a strong year of growth looks like saving that never happened, and a fall hides contributions that were paid.

Defined benefit schemes are different again. There the pension input amount is the growth in the value of the promised benefits over the year, after the opening value is revalued by CPI, not the contributions paid. The method is set out in DB pension input amounts and CPI revaluation, and the DB pension input amount calculator works it from the opening and closing benefits, which is a useful cross-check on a DB scheme's statement.

When a scheme must send a statement

PTM167100 sets out when a scheme administrator has to send a statement without being asked. For an active member (and a deferred member, unless a carve-out applies) there are two triggers:

• the member's pension input amounts under that scheme are more than the standard annual allowance, which for 2025/26 is £60,000; or
• the administrator believes the member has flexibly accessed a money purchase arrangement, and money purchase pension input amounts under the scheme are more than £10,000, the money purchase annual allowance.

The statement is due by 6 October following the end of the tax year. It can be later where the scheme is waiting for information from someone else, or after certain changes to the scheme's rules.

The test is per scheme and against the standard figure. A client tapered to a low allowance may exceed it across two schemes without either scheme reaching the trigger, and receive no statement at all. Where no statement arrived, PTM167300 lets a member, or a former member, ask for the same information in writing. The administrator then has until the later of three months after the request and 6 October following the end of the tax year.

From the statement to carry forward

Carry forward lets a client use annual allowance left unused in any of the previous three tax years in which they were a member of a registered pension scheme at some point (PTM055100). The current year's allowance is used first, then the unused allowance from the earliest of the three years.

The unused allowance for each earlier year is that year's annual allowance less the pension input amounts under every scheme for that year (PTM055200). The statements supply the inputs, one scheme at a time. The allowance is the one that actually applied: where the client was tapered in that year, it is the tapered allowance, not the standard figure the statement prints. That makes the taper test part of reading old statements too. It needs the client's threshold income and adjusted income for each year. Adjusted income includes pension input, so the same statements feed the taper test as well as the carry-forward figure (PTM057100).

A worked year

This case is one of ParaplanAI's pension test cases, and every figure below is read from it or from the 2025/26 tax-year figures. The client has one money purchase scheme, and the pension input amount under it for 2025/26 is £75,000. That is more than the £60,000 standard annual allowance, so the scheme had to send a statement by 6 October. The same statement also shows the scheme's inputs for the three earlier years. Read against each year's allowance, they leave this much unused:

Before the allowance is set, the taper test for 2025/26. The client's threshold income is not more than the taper gate, so the taper cannot apply and adjusted income does not need working out (PTM057100). The full standard allowance applies:

The £75,000 input uses the whole £60,000 allowance for 2025/26 first. The rest comes from carry forward, starting with 2022/23, the earliest year. The £82,000 total covers the input, so there is no excess and no annual allowance charge. Without the earlier years' figures, the same input would have looked like a breach.

The annual allowance and carry-forward calculators work out a tax year from 2023/24 to 2026/27. A 2025/26 year looks back to 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25, and the calculators take each of those earlier years’ pension input amounts as inputs. They measure each earlier year against the standard allowance and say so on the result, so a year in which the client was tapered needs its tapered allowance worked out separately.

Checks before relying on the figures

• Every scheme the client belonged to in each of the four years is accounted for, including any that did not send a statement because its own inputs were under the trigger.
• Each prior year's allowance is the one that applied: tapered where the client's threshold income and adjusted income for that year crossed the limits.
• Any year in which the money purchase annual allowance applied is read from the money purchase statement, and the alternative basis is checked.
• A defined benefit figure is the scheme's calculated pension input amount, not the contributions paid.
• Any earlier year whose inputs were more than that year's allowance has already used up unused allowance from the years before it, to the extent of the excess, so that part is not available again (PTM055100).

Run the figures on the pension carry forward calculator, which shows the earliest-year-first working line by line, the annual allowance calculator for the charge, and the tapered annual allowance calculator for the taper in the year being tested. For planning and illustration only; this guide describes the rules and is not tax or financial advice.

PTM167100 (statements provided automatically) · PTM167200 (what a statement contains) · PTM167300 (statements on request) · PTM053200 (money purchase pension input amounts) · PTM055100, PTM055200 (carry forward) · PTM057100 (tapered annual allowance)