Can you transfer your pension allowance to your spouse?

You cannot transfer your pension allowance to your spouse: HMRC sets each allowance for the individual, so a couple has two separate limits, not one to pool.

Pension allowances belong to the individual, so one partner's unused room cannot be handed to the other. Couples do have legitimate routes that come close, and they are set out below. The form on this page suits couples too. An FCA-authorised adviser, reached by phone free of charge, can weigh up with you which of your pensions might take any money one of you pays in.

Can you transfer pension allowance to a spouse or civil partner?

No. GOV.UK describes the annual allowance in personal terms: "Your annual allowance is the most you can save in your pension pots in a tax year (6 April to 5 April) before you have to pay tax." It is £60,000 this tax year, and it "applies to all of your private pensions, if you have more than one." HMRC's Pensions Tax Manual is plainer still: the annual allowance is "the maximum amount of pension savings an individual can make each year with the benefit of tax relief."

The same goes for what HMRC calls carry forward, which lets you use room you did not use in the previous three tax years. HMRC's Pensions Tax Manual says "Individuals can carry forward annual allowance they have not used in recent previous tax years to the current tax year", and the person doing so must themselves have been a member of a registered pension scheme in the year concerned. Unused allowance for a past year is worked out from that individual's own pension savings in that year, so your partner's unused years cannot top up yours. How carry forward works for one person is in the carry forward guide.

Is there a couple's pension allowance for married couples?

HMRC says the annual allowance rules apply to "members of registered pension schemes", so a married couple who both save are two members, each with a limit of their own. The tax-free cash limits read the same way. The lump sum allowance is capped at £268,275, which GOV.UK calls "the most you can take" as tax-free cash from your pensions. A separate, larger limit of £1,073,100 applies to certain lump sums, such as those paid on serious illness or as death benefits. Both count lump sums from your own pensions, the larger one including certain death benefits paid to your beneficiaries; the lump sum and death benefit allowance guide explains how it works.

GOV.UK adds that a protected allowance may raise the tax-free amount for someone who holds one. Your pension provider can tell you how much of each allowance you have used.

What couples can do instead

The nearest thing to sharing is that one partner can pay into the other's pension. The two limbs of the rule matter here.

• The money counts as the member's. HMRC's manual says a relievable contribution is "paid to a registered pension scheme by or on behalf of a member of that scheme", so it can come from the member or "by a third party on behalf of the individual member". Tax relief goes to the member, not to the person who paid.
• It uses the member's allowance, not yours. GOV.UK counts towards the annual allowance "the total amount paid in to a defined contribution scheme in a tax year by you or anyone else". A partner's gift into your pension is therefore part of your total, and is not an extra helping.

What this means in practice: a partner who has spare income, or has paid little into their own pension, cannot lend their unused allowance. They can fund your pension, subject to your own limits, and your allowance is still the ceiling. The practical steps, and what happens if a couple separates, are in can you pay into your spouse's pension.

A partner who does not earn

Someone with no earnings can still have a pension paid into, and GOV.UK puts the limit for 20% relief, claimed by the provider, at £2,880 a year where the member has no earnings. The limits for low earners, and the scheme conditions, are in our page on relief with a low or no income.

Is the Marriage Allowance a pension allowance?

No, it is a different thing. Marriage Allowance "lets you transfer £1,260 of your Personal Allowance to your husband, wife or civil partner", with the other partner's tax cut by as much as £252 across the year. It moves income tax allowance, not pension allowance, and it is open only to married couples and civil partners where the lower earner pays no income tax or has income below their Personal Allowance (usually £12,570) and the other pays basic rate tax, or in Scotland the starter, basic or intermediate rate. GOV.UK's Marriage Allowance guide has the conditions.

What about a spouse's pension when you die?

That is a separate question from transferring an allowance. A scheme may pay benefits to a surviving husband, wife or civil partner, and the amount depends on the scheme; see how pension death benefits work. Moving a pension itself to a spouse is covered in our pension transfer to a spouse page, and what happens in divorce is in the pensions and divorce guide.

If one of you has more pension room than the other

Can my spouse use my unused annual allowance?

No. An allowance is attached to the person, and carry forward draws on unused allowance worked out from your own past pension savings. Your spouse's own allowance is what limits their saving. The detail on the limit is in the annual allowance guide.

Can we combine our lump sum allowances?

No. The lump sum allowance is a limit on what each person can take tax free from their own pensions. A higher figure may apply if you have a protection; your pension provider can tell you which.

Does Marriage Allowance affect my pension?

It does not change any pension allowance; it only shifts income tax allowance between partners. GOV.UK says that either of you already drawing a pension does not affect an application.

What if one of us earns far more than the other?

A high earner's annual allowance may be reduced under the taper, which is personal to them; see the tapered annual allowance guide. How both partners' allowances can best be used is a question for an adviser, who can go over it on the free call-back.

Planning as a pair

Pension allowances are personal, but the plan for your household need not be. Put your two sets of figures to an adviser on a call-back; the form here arranges one free.