Bloomsbury Financial Planning

Under the A-Day rules that took effect in April anyone can contribute up to 100 per cent of their salary to their scheme, providing it does not exceed an annual limit. This limit is set at £215,000 for the current 2006-07 tax year and will rise to £225,000 the next tax year. But investors have a one-off opportunity to double up two years' worth of contributions in one tax year.

This has arisen as the new pension rules allow scheme members to bring forward the annual deadline for making contributions - known as the input date - as long as the first anniversary of the scheme has not passed.

Before A-Day, contribution limits related to how much you could pay into your pension in any one tax year - so from April 6 one year to April 5 the following year. Now scheme members have the flexibility to set their own input date. So the contribution period can be changed to, for instance, between November 30 one year and November 29 the year after.

In this case, you could make the current tax year's contribution of £215,000 on or before November 30 this year and then next tax year's contribution of £225,000 from December 1 this year. You could therefore effectively pay £440,000 into your scheme before the end of the current tax year. If you were to do this then you would not be able to make another contribution to your pension until December 1, 2008.

Financial advisers are seeing a number of high net worth clients taking advantage of this opportunity.

One benefit is that they will be able to receive tax relief on the two contributions in the current tax year - that is before April 6 2007. Both contributions will qualify for immediate tax relief at the basic rate of 22 per cent and higher rate relief of an additional 18 per cent can potentially be reclaimed via a rebate.

Bloomsbury Financial Planning says this wheeze is being used by individuals who do not envisage working for that much longer in their present job, or those who have left a highly paid job but still have taxable income, perhaps from share option schemes.

Campbell Edgar, investment manager at Bloomsbury, says: "This allows people a one-off chance to make a big hit in one tax year."

He says it is attractive to people who are not too far from retirement, perhaps those aged around 50, who want to boost their fund. "It gives people the chance to contribute nearly a third of the total lifetime contribution limit in one go," says Edgar.

The lifetime contribution limit is currently £1.5m. Investors need to be careful that they do not go over this limit as any benefits taken in excess of this will suffer a 55 per cent tax charge.

Pointon York Sipp Solutions, a pension provider, also has a number of clients looking at "doubling up" their contributions.

Christine Hallett, managing director, says: "This works for people who have done particularly well in one year."

She says it provides a way for individuals expecting big bonuses at the start of next year to bump up their pension contributions this tax year.

"This affects high net worth individuals who will earn more than £215,000 this year and want to pay more than that into their pension scheme.

"In the long run people are not getting the chance to contribute any more than they would normally but by playing around with the input date the tax benefits are more immediate," says Hallett.

You have one chance to accelerate the input date on a pension scheme and this has to be done before the first anniversary of the pension scheme. However, Edgar points out that you can at any time start a new personal scheme and therefore repeat the process for each new scheme.

If you are a member of a personal pension scheme then you can elect to move the input date yourself.

If you are in an occupational scheme then the scheme administrator would have to get it changed for you.