As the end of the tax year approaches, it can seem like there are multiple tasks to do to make the most of allowances. Our checklist below is designed to help you get on track and take advantage of the tax efficient opportunities available. The new tax year starts on 6th April 2019, which will reset many of the allowances.

1. Pension saving: Maximise tax relief

Key information

• Contribute to your pension
• This only applies to relevant UK earnings
• You may be able to use previous years allowances to use as a contribution

2. High earners: making a pension contribution before the TYE could increase your annual allowance

Key information

• If your adjusted income is over £150k you could start losing your annual allowances
• By reducing your threshold income you could increase your pensions contribution
• Any unused annual allowance is still available to utilise the current year and previous three years

3. Clients approaching retirement: boost pension saving now before triggering the Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA)

Key information

• Once you take £1 of pension income, you are only able to put in a maximum of £4k to your pension a year from that point
• Non-pensions savings that could support ‘income’ required

4. Employees: Sacrifice bonus for an employer pension contribution

Key information

• You need to know if your employer allows bonus sacrifices
• Is your employer will to share the NI savings?
• Please note that this may affect your child benefit

5. Business Owners: take profits as pension contributions

Key information

• You will need to know your company accounting period and your company pre-tax profit
• You may be able to save on your corporation tax
• Any unused annual allowance is still available to utilise the current year and previous three years

6. Use ISA allowances

Key information

• You have £20k of ISA allowances to use

7. Recover personal allowances and child benefit

Key information

• Through pensions contributions, you can reduce your adjusted net income and therefore retain your child benefit
• The annual allowance for your pension is still available to utilise from the current year and last three years

8. Investments: take profits using capital gains tax allowance

Key information

• You are able to offset losses against gains
• Losses can be carried forward from previous years

9. Bonds

Key information

• Cash in bonds could be used to use up your personal allowance and personal savings allowance
• You could also use up your SRB allowance and BRB allowance

10. No bonus? No problem: recycle savings into a more efficient tax wrapper

Key information

• Make sure you are using all of your tax wrappers