Tax Savings Finder
Unlike Income Tax itself, which is calculated and deducted automatically through PAYE, most UK tax reliefs and allowances have to be actively claimed — through Self Assessment, a specific HMRC online form, or a phone call to adjust your tax code. HMRC doesn't proactively identify that you're eligible for Marriage Allowance, higher-rate pension relief, or the trading allowance and simply apply it; the responsibility sits with the taxpayer to know the relief exists and take the step to claim it.
This structural quirk means genuinely significant sums go unclaimed every year, not because people are ineligible, but because they've simply never heard of the specific relief, assumed (often wrongly) that it doesn't apply to their situation, or found the claims process unclear enough to put off. This tool exists to shortcut that discovery step — flagging the reliefs worth investigating based on a few simple facts about your situation, then linking straight to the detail and the claims process for each one.
Marriage Allowance lets one spouse or civil partner transfer up to 10% of their unused Personal Allowance to the other, worth up to £252 a year in 2026/27 — genuinely simple to claim, and backdatable up to four tax years if never claimed before, which can mean a useful lump sum on a first claim.
Pension tax relief is added automatically at the basic rate by most pension schemes, but higher and additional-rate taxpayers need to actively claim the extra relief above 20% themselves, usually via Self Assessment — a step many higher earners paying into a workplace pension simply never take, leaving genuine money unclaimed year after year.
The trading allowance lets anyone with casual, small-scale self-employed or side-hustle income claim the first £1,000 completely tax-free with no need to even report it on a tax return in many cases, distinct from the £1,000 property allowance which covers small rental income instead. Rent-a-room relief is far more generous for a genuine lodger in your own home — up to £7,500 tax-free a year, considerably more than the £1,000 property allowance, though the two can't be combined on the same income.
For company directors, the salary-vs-dividend split and the option to have the company make pension contributions directly (which avoids both Income Tax and National Insurance entirely, unlike drawing salary or dividends first and then contributing personally) are both frequently underused levers for extracting profit more tax-efficiently than most directors realise.
Consider someone who is a PAYE employee earning £58,000 (a higher-rate taxpayer), married to a partner earning £11,000 (below the Personal Allowance), pays into a workplace pension, occasionally sells handmade goods online for around £600 a year, and donates £30 a month to charity with Gift Aid ticked.
Running through this tool flags several genuine opportunities: Marriage Allowance, since the lower-earning partner has £1,570 of unused Personal Allowance (£12,570 minus £11,000) available to transfer, worth up to £252 a year and potentially over £1,000 if backdated four years. Higher-rate pension relief, since basic-rate relief is likely already applied automatically by the pension scheme, but the extra 20 percentage points of higher-rate relief needs an active Self Assessment claim. The trading allowance means the £600 of side-hustle income is entirely tax-free and, in many cases, doesn't even need declaring. And the Gift Aid donations, at £360 a year, mean an extra roughly £90 of higher-rate relief the donor can claim back themselves, on top of the 25% uplift the charity already receives.
Individually, several of these might seem small, but combined they represent several hundred pounds a year in genuinely available relief that requires nothing more than a handful of straightforward claims — exactly the kind of situation this tool is designed to surface quickly.
It's worth stressing that none of these individual claims are complicated once identified — Marriage Allowance takes a few minutes online, a higher-rate pension relief claim is a single section of a Self Assessment return, and the trading allowance often requires no action beyond simply not reporting income that falls under the threshold. The genuine barrier for most people isn't the difficulty of claiming, it's not knowing the relief exists or applies to them in the first place, which is precisely the gap a short, honest questionnaire like this one is designed to close.
Tick every box that genuinely applies to you, even ones that seem unrelated to tax at first glance — being married, having a small side hustle, or renting out a spare room are exactly the kind of ordinary, everyday facts that unlock a specific relief most people don't associate with "doing their taxes." The tool re-runs instantly every time you tick or untick a box, so there's no harm in experimenting to see how your results change as your situation does, or checking what would apply if your circumstances shifted (a pay rise into higher-rate tax, for instance, or taking on a lodger).
Once you have a shortlist, work through each linked calculator or guide in turn rather than trying to action everything from memory — each one explains the specific eligibility rules in full (which can be more detailed than the simple yes/no questions here capture) and the exact claims process, whether that's a specific HMRC online form, a Self Assessment section, or a phone call to adjust a tax code. Some reliefs, particularly Marriage Allowance, can be backdated for several years if you've never claimed before, so it's worth checking the backdating rules on the linked page even if your situation has recently changed.
This tool deliberately asks only a handful of simple, broad questions, which means it will inevitably miss reliefs that depend on more specific circumstances than a short questionnaire can practically capture — Capital Gains Tax reliefs on selling assets, Inheritance Tax planning, EIS/SEIS investment relief, Blind Person's Allowance, and numerous smaller, more niche allowances aren't covered here, simply because they apply to a much smaller slice of situations and would clutter the results for most visitors.
It also can't account for anything specific to your actual numbers — exact income figures, exact contribution amounts, or interactions between multiple reliefs applying at once, all of which can change whether a relief is worth claiming or exactly how much it's worth. Treat every result here as "worth a closer look," not as a guaranteed saving, and use the linked calculator on each result to get an actual figure for your specific situation before assuming it's the final word.