How to sort out tax deductions with pension overpayments

[HangTime]

This tax year I started overpaying my pension contributions because I have a small pension pot for my age and it's quite tax efficient (on paper) to do so.
However the issue I have is that my net pay is a lot lower than it should be because I'm having the 'normal' amount of tax deducted under PAYE as if I was earning the full taxable income. I'm actually paying more in income tax than my net pay right now,

I don't really know how to get this sorted out, I can do a self-assessment tax return at the end of the tax year but this introduces a big delay in getting the money back, the last time I contacted HMRC regarding an a one-off lump sum pension contribution I made that was basically their advice, wait for April then do a tax return, surely there has to be a better way when it's a regular pension amount going out each month? One of the reasons I changed to pension overpayments via PAYE rather than accumulating cash and then doing lump sums was I thought that would 'sort itself out' in a more automated way from a tax perspective.

Does anyone know how to make this work properly, should they be updating my tax code to say my tax free allowance is much higher and if so how do I convince them to do this instead of just asking for a retrospective tax return, wait a few months and maybe get a cheque in the post?

 

[EvilRob]

Additional pension contributions via your company scheme reduce your taxable income for PAYE. This should be automatically taken care of.
If you think HMRC's estimate of your taxable income is too high then you can create a personal tax account at tax.service.gov.uk and manually adjust it. This will generate a new tax code and your employer will be notified.

 

[EvilRob]

Additional pension contributions via your company scheme reduce your taxable income for PAYE. This should be automatically taken care of.
If you think HMRC's estimate of your taxable income is too high then you can create a personal tax account at tax.service.gov.uk and manually adjust it. This will generate a new tax code and your employer will be notified.

Correction: Above applies if your company scheme is a net pay or salary sacrifice arrangement.
If it's relief at source your provider will add 20% and you will need to claim back the rest via tax return.

 

[HangTime]

Thanks, I know about the need to claim the extra 20%, I've probably just got myself confused into thinking this scenario is different. In my mind, it's like, my gross salary is X, but I'm making pension payments of Y, so really I should only be getting taxed based on X-Y instead of based on X that they are taking every month. It all feels more complicated and retrospective than it should be I guess there are so many different permutations out there it is hard to cater for these sort of scenarios. It's only really because I accidentally went overdrawn due to how low my net pay is that made me think I really ought to try and do something about this.

 

[EvilRob]

You really need to find out what type of scheme you belong to. If you are claiming the extra 20% manually then the contributions will almost certainly be from your net pay instead of your gross pay.
What you can do is tell HMRC about the contributions you are making using your personal tax account (PAYE section->Check Current Tax year->What makes up your tax free allowance->Add a missing allowance or tax relief->Add a Personal Pension Payment)
Your tax code will then be adjusted. Your employer will be notified of the new tax code, your take home pay will be bumped up and you won't have to claim it back manually.