How is pension income taxed in each UK nation?

What counts as pension income

The State Pension and a workplace or personal pension are all taxable income. They are added to anything else you earn, and the total meets the bands below.

The first £12,570 of most people’s income is the personal allowance, and carries no tax. The allowance shrinks once income passes £100,000, and has gone by £125,140.

Where you live decides the bands

Someone who lives in Scotland pays Scottish income tax, and someone who lives in Wales pays the Welsh rates. Both cover pensions as well as wages.

Savings interest and dividends are taxed at the same rates everywhere in the UK.

Scotland, 2026/27

England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2026/27

Each table is for a whole year’s income, before the allowance is taken off, for someone with the standard personal allowance.

How the tax is collected

A pension provider usually takes off any tax owed before it pays, including tax due on the State Pension.

When there is no other pension to take it from, HMRC may send a Simple Assessment bill for the tax on the State Pension.

How Landfall handles it

Landfall applies UK income tax year by year, to each person separately. Earnings, pension withdrawals, State Pension and guaranteed income meet the bands of the nation each person lives in, and interest and dividends stack on top at the UK-wide rates. How each tax is worked out, in more detail.

Each person in a plan lives in one of the four nations: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Edit plan sets it for each of you, under “Lives in”, and it holds for the whole plan. Which figures the nation changes, in more detail.