Tax credits & pension contributions

[ivegotthisyeah]

I have been given a small pay increase at work maybe and extra £100 a month which will obviously increase my overall annual salary and therefore reduce my tax credits entitlement.i want to start a pension with work as they input a good percentage and as a single parent I need to get on board with it. If I put my increase in as a pension contribution will this mean my tax credits won't be effected? Do they not count my pension contribution in my income?
Am I making sense?

If you out your increase into your pension your tax credits won't be affected.

Check how yours is taken. Mine is the non standard way/cheaper way for employers to offer a pension so its an absolute ball aches when it comes to tax credit renewals. I pay tax on mine and then it is claims back so my employer declares my full gross pay and not my contributions so renewal takes ages. If it was taken before my salary had deductions made it would be easier as the HMRC would have my salary minus my contributions declared to them. Hope that makes sense.

But whatever way your pension contributions are not considered earned income so are not counted for tax credits

Yep pension payments are not taxable. However agree with comments above about it being a complete pain if your employer isn't signed up to a traditional scheme. If they only have one of the new auto enrolment schemes like NEST then tax credits throw your renewal back to you every year. It is 23rd January and we still haven't had confirmation of last year's tax credits, even though we think we owe them money. So the end of year statement is nearly 10 months late. One year they just randomly stopped paying me for 6 months, which as we had submitted all the correct figures and had all the evidence just meant I got a big lump sum eventually. Total nightmare.

Firstly apologies for my response riddled with typos. Sorry Im not well at the moment so was rushing my reply.

Mine is with NEST and it was awful last year. My TC were reduced massively from May until September. I got lucky as some went on longer but those 5 months were absolutely awful.

So as you can imagine I am already threating about April!

Thank you! My pension is the normal way before tax I've been told

Spidey my husband’s pension is taken like yours after tax and tax credits refuse to take it into consideration. How did you get it? They don’t have any of it when it came to renewal

@Saladd0dger no they must deduct them.

To be honest it was an absolute nightmare of back and forth and being told NO. I have to provide payslips, bank statements, pension details and also provide information taken from their website where it tells them clearly the arrangement.

You must persist. As long as your husband pays full tax and NI on his salary, then pays pension and they the pension provider reclaims the tax after then they shouldn't be refusing to accept them