Pension annual allowance

Carry forward pension contributions — explained.

How to use unused annual allowance from the previous three tax years, the membership rules, the earnings cap, and the most common errors people make when calculating how much they can contribute.

By Pension Bible editorial team·Last reviewed 9 April 2026·7 min read

What carry forward is and when it applies

The annual allowance limits how much can be contributed to pensions with tax relief in any one tax year. The standard limit for 2025/26 is £60,000. Carry forward is the mechanism that allows any portion of the annual allowance that went unused in a prior tax year to be brought forward and added to the current year's limit.

The practical effect is significant. In the right circumstances, carry forward can make contributions of £120,000, £180,000 or more in a single tax year tax-efficient rather than subject to a charge.

Carry forward is most commonly used when someone has irregular earnings — a large one-off bonus, a profitable year in self-employment, or a windfall — and wants to make a large pension contribution that exceeds the standard annual allowance. It is also used to absorb unexpected defined benefit accrual spikes, or simply to catch up on years when pension saving was lower than it could have been.

The carry forward calculator calculates the available carry forward given your prior-year pension inputs and the annual allowance checker applies the result to your current-year total.

The rules

There are three core conditions for carry forward.

1. Registered pension scheme membership. You must have been a member of at least one UK registered pension scheme in each year you want to carry forward from. "Member" includes active members, deferred members, and pensioner members. It does not require that any contribution was made in those years — being a deferred member with a frozen pot satisfies the requirement. If you had no pension scheme membership whatsoever in a given prior year, you cannot carry forward any allowance from that year.

2. Current-year allowance used first. Carry forward can only be used once the current tax year's full annual allowance has been used. In 2025/26, that means the first £60,000 of pension input is covered by the standard allowance, and carry forward only begins absorbing any excess beyond that point. You cannot dip into carry forward while leaving the current year's allowance partially unused.

3. Earnings cap. The total pension contribution in a given tax year — including employer contributions — cannot exceed the individual's UK earnings (employment income, self-employment income, or both) for that year. This limit does not apply to employer-only contributions, but it does constrain what an individual can personally contribute. Someone earning £80,000 who has £200,000 of carry forward available can still only make a total personal contribution of up to £80,000 in a year where their earnings are £80,000.

The three-year window: 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25

In the 2025/26 tax year, the three years available for carry forward are:

• 2022/23 — annual allowance was £40,000
• 2023/24 — annual allowance was £60,000 (the allowance was increased from £40,000 to £60,000 from April 2023)
• 2024/25 — annual allowance was £60,000

This matters because the maximum carry forward available from 2022/23 is capped at £40,000 (the allowance that applied that year), not £60,000. If you made no pension contributions in 2022/23, you can carry forward up to £40,000 from that year, not £60,000.

The theoretical maximum carry forward into 2025/26 is therefore £40,000 + £60,000 + £60,000 = £160,000, plus the current year's £60,000, giving a ceiling of £220,000 — assuming the prior years were entirely unused and earnings are high enough to cover it.

Worked example: £180,000 in a single year

Consider someone who has been a deferred member of a workplace scheme throughout but made minimal contributions in recent years. Their pension inputs were:

• 2022/23: £5,000 contributed → £35,000 unused
• 2023/24: £10,000 contributed → £50,000 unused
• 2024/25: £15,000 contributed → £45,000 unused
• 2025/26 (current year): planning a large contribution

Available carry forward: £35,000 + £50,000 + £45,000 = £130,000.

Current year allowance: £60,000.

Combined ceiling: £190,000.

If this person has earnings of at least £190,000 in 2025/26, they can contribute up to £190,000 gross to a pension in that tax year without triggering any annual allowance charge.

If they contribute £180,000, the first £60,000 is covered by the 2025/26 annual allowance. The remaining £120,000 draws on carry forward, starting with the oldest year: £35,000 from 2022/23, then £50,000 from 2023/24, then £35,000 from 2024/25. £10,000 of 2024/25 carry forward remains unused and cannot be preserved — carry forward lapses once a year falls outside the three-year window.

Common mistakes

Confusing gross and net contributions. When contributing to a pension via relief at source (rather than salary sacrifice), you pay a net amount and the scheme reclaims basic-rate tax relief and adds it to your pot. If you want a £60,000 gross pension input, you pay £48,000 and the scheme adds £12,000. The annual allowance is measured against the gross figure, so it is the gross figure — including the relief added by the scheme — that counts towards the limit and towards carry forward calculations.

Forgetting that earnings must cover the total. Carry forward creates headroom against the annual allowance, but it does not override the earnings cap. Someone earning £50,000 cannot make a £120,000 personal pension contribution in that year, regardless of how much carry forward is theoretically available. The earnings limit and the carry forward limit are separate tests and both must be passed.

Assuming deferred scheme membership counts without checking. It does count — but only if the scheme itself was registered with HMRC as a pension scheme in that year. Most workplace and personal pensions are registered; some older occupational schemes or overseas schemes may not qualify. If there is any doubt, the pension provider can confirm whether the scheme was registered in the relevant year.

Using up current-year allowance when carry forward would have been sufficient. This is an order-of-operations issue rather than a cash mistake, but it can affect tax planning in future years. Carry forward from older years is used before more recent years, so it lapses sooner if not used — no strategic reason exists to leave old carry forward untouched while the current year's allowance is artificially inflated.

This is factual information, not financial advice. If you're unsure what's right for your situation, speak to an FCA-regulated financial adviser.