Paying whole salary into pension

[brigghouse]

Can I do this? ... pay into pension direct from salary... and somehow pay less tax or NI?

Just wondering if I heard this wrong.

(Have savings elsewhere to cover this for a few months).

If your employer offers a salary sacrifice scheme then it may be possible but I think minimum wage regulations will stop it being the entire salary. Salary sacrifice cannot result in your taxable pay being below National Minimum Wage. So you would get some salary paid to you.
You could then pay that into the pension as a voluntary contribution.

You would need to look at how that affected tax relief as your voluntary contribution would get tax relief. You would also need to make sure total year pension contributions do not exceed the annual limit of £40,000.

So in theory it is possible but I think you would still end up paying some Income Tax depending on your total taxable income in the financial year (which I guess will be over your personal tax allowance) and paying some National Insurance.

Payroll/Pension admin may not be happy to manually change the contribution amounts on a frequent basis, so they may put a limit on how often you can change the pension arrangements. Talk to them about it if this is something you are seriously looking at doing.

I think you cqn receive your salary (net of tax and NI) and pay it direct to a SIPP. Basic rate tax will be recovered by the SIPP provider. If you’re a higher rate tax payer you can reclaim the difference via your tax return or by ringing HMRC.

This is subject to the £40k annual limit (or less if you earn enough to be subject to pension taper rules).

My dad had some arrangement when over 55 and working as a consultant where he did this and also took 25% straight back out as cash, essentially rendering earnings tax free.

Yes you can pay 100% of your salary in. Salary sacrifice will only be available if your employer operates this system, and then you will need to take home min wage. From this you can then pay the balance, net of basic tax, into a pension. You can actually get back MORE tax than you pay in income tax as you get the tax back even on the untaxed first £12k. You won’t get rid of NI though except on sacrificed money.

You can put up to £160k minus any contributions over the current and 3 previous tax years. However only put in what you earn as it can’t offset anything beyond 100% earnings (not including rental income)