NHS Pensions has until 6 October 2026 to send pension savings statements for 2025/26. The statement is triggered by growth above the standard £60,000 allowance, not by whether you owe anything — so the dentists most likely to face a charge are precisely the ones who will never be sent one.
Article · 18 August 2026
Between now and 6 October 2026, NHS Pensions has to issue pension savings statements for the 2025/26 tax year. It is a statutory obligation, not a courtesy: where a member's pension growth in a scheme exceeded the annual allowance for the year, the scheme must tell them by that date so the figure can go on a tax return due the following 31 January.
The problem is the trigger. A statement goes out automatically when growth in the NHS scheme exceeded the standard annual allowance of £60,000. It does not go out because you owe a charge. For a dentist whose allowance has been tapered down to £34,000, growth of £30,000 is a five-figure tax problem and produces no statement whatsoever. Nothing arrives, nothing prompts you, and the first anyone notices is usually when the return is being prepared in January — if it is noticed at all.
Every active NHS member has been in the 2015 scheme since 1 April 2022, so for almost every working dentist the annual allowance question is a 2015 scheme question. It is a career average scheme: each year you bank 1/54th of that year's pensionable earnings as pension, and the pot built up so far is revalued for active members at CPI plus 1.5%, applied on 6 April.
HMRC then values the movement. The opening pension is multiplied by 16 and uprated by CPI for the year to the previous September; the closing pension is multiplied by 16; the difference is your pension input amount. For 2025/26 the opening uplift was 1.7%, being CPI to September 2024, and the 6 April 2025 revaluation for active members was 3.2% — that same 1.7% plus the statutory 1.5%.
Put an ordinary set of figures through it. A dentist with £6,800 of 2015 scheme pension at 5 April 2025 and net pensionable earnings of £108,000 for the year:
That is the shape of a normal year, and it explains why so few dentists trip the £60,000 line on NHS growth alone. Only the 1.5% above inflation counts from the revaluation — £1,632 of the total here — with the rest coming from the year's accrual. To reach £60,000 of growth from accrual you would need pensionable earnings north of £200,000. The dentists who do get a statement have usually had a step change: buying into a practice, picking up a second contract, or a large purchase of additional pension.
The tapered annual allowance is what catches practice owners and high-earning private dentists, and it works on two income measures.
Threshold income is broadly your taxable income from every source after reliefs, without the pension savings. If it is £200,000 or less, the taper cannot apply, no matter how large the pension growth. That is the single most useful test in this whole area, and it is the one to run first.
Adjusted income is broadly the same income with the value of the year's pension savings added back. Once it passes £260,000, the £60,000 allowance falls by £1 for every £2 of excess, down to a floor of £10,000 once adjusted income reaches £360,000.
Both tests have to be failed for the taper to bite. Clear £200,000 of threshold income and you keep the full £60,000 regardless of what the pension did.
Take an illustrative principal with a mixed NHS and private list whose adjusted income for 2025/26 comes out at £312,000.
The excess is £25,800. Unused allowance can be carried forward from the three previous tax years, and if £9,000 is available the taxable excess falls to £16,800. The charge is added to taxable income and taxed at the marginal rate, so at 45% it costs £7,560, payable by 31 January 2027 and reported on the SA101 additional information pages of the return.
Scheme pays lets the pension scheme settle the charge with HMRC in exchange for a permanent reduction in your eventual benefits. There are two versions, and the difference matters.
Mandatory scheme pays is a right. The scheme must settle the charge if it exceeds £2,000 and your pension input in that scheme exceeded the standard £60,000 allowance. You elect using form SPE2, and for a 2025/26 charge the deadline is 31 July 2027.
Read that second condition again, because it is where tapered dentists fall. A charge caused entirely by the taper fails it: growth of £29,800 did not exceed £60,000, so there is no right to mandatory scheme pays at all.
Voluntary scheme pays is the fallback, covering the part of the charge attributable to NHS growth where the mandatory conditions are not met. It is a request rather than a right, and the sting is in the interest: if the scheme settles after the 31 January payment date, you carry HMRC's interest on the late amount, not the scheme. In the example above, the slice of the charge relating to the personal pension is yours to fund either way.
Unused annual allowance from the three previous tax years can be brought forward, using the current year's allowance first and then the oldest of the three. For a dentist with a single spiky year — a practice purchase, a contract taken on mid-year — three years of unused headroom will frequently absorb the whole excess and leave nothing to pay.
Two things blunt it. If you were tapered in the earlier years, the amount available is the unused tapered allowance, which can be as little as £10,000 a year. And carry forward requires you to have been a member of a registered pension scheme in those years, which is rarely a problem for NHS dentists but does catch people who left the scheme and later rejoined. Working out what is genuinely available means reconstructing three years of pension input, which is the real reason this is left until January.
Looking forward, 2026/27 is a quieter year on the mechanics: the 6 April 2026 revaluation for active members was 5.3%, being CPI to September 2025 of 3.8% plus the statutory 1.5%, and the opening uplift for the same year is that 3.8% — so once again only the 1.5% above inflation shows up as growth. The thresholds are unchanged at £200,000 and £260,000. What changes your position is your income, not the pension rules.
The rest of the year's dates are in our dental tax calendar. If you would rather someone ran the threshold income test and the three-year carry forward before the return is drafted rather than during it, start a conversation with us.
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No. NHS Pensions issues a statement automatically only where your growth in the scheme exceeded the standard £60,000 allowance, which is a test of pension growth rather than a test of whether tax is owed. If your allowance has been tapered to £34,000 and your growth was £30,000, a charge is due and no statement will ever arrive, because the trigger was never met. The silence is not a clearance. Members can request an on-demand statement covering the year's growth, and anyone whose income puts them near the taper thresholds should do exactly that rather than treating an empty postbox as an answer.
Start with threshold income, which is broadly your taxable income for the year from every source after reliefs, leaving pension savings out of it. If that figure is £200,000 or less, the taper cannot apply at all and you keep the full £60,000 however large your pension growth was. Only if you clear £200,000 does the second test matter: adjusted income, which adds the value of the year's pension savings back on. Above £260,000 of adjusted income the allowance drops by £1 for every £2 of excess, reaching its floor of £10,000 once adjusted income hits £360,000.
Only if you qualify. Mandatory scheme pays is a right, but it requires a charge above £2,000 and pension growth in that scheme above the standard £60,000 allowance, and a charge caused purely by the taper fails the second condition. The fallback is voluntary scheme pays, which the NHS scheme can agree to for the part of the charge attributable to your NHS growth. The difference costs money: with voluntary scheme pays you remain responsible for HMRC interest if the charge is settled after the 31 January payment date, whereas mandatory scheme pays carries no such exposure.
Because the standard allowance was breached on growth alone, which happens after a step change in pensionable earnings rather than a high income. Buying into a practice, taking on a second NHS contract, a large increase in your net pensionable earnings, or a substantial purchase of additional pension will all do it. In the 2015 scheme you bank 1/54th of the year's pensionable earnings, and HMRC values that movement at sixteen times the increase in annual pension, so earnings jumps translate into large input figures. A statement is not a bill: three years of carry forward frequently absorb a one-off spike entirely.
Yes, and it is easy to miss. Flexibly accessing a defined contribution pot triggers the money purchase annual allowance, which caps contributions to money purchase schemes at £10,000 a year with no carry forward available against it. Your defined benefit accrual in the NHS scheme is then measured against an alternative annual allowance of £50,000, being the standard £60,000 less the £10,000. For a dentist who has drawn on a private pension while still working clinically, that combination substantially narrows the room available and needs to be modelled before further contributions are made.
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