Hundred SummersTax-free lump sum calculator: up front, or slice by slice?
Your maximum tax-free cash is 25% of the pot, capped by the £268,275 Lump Sum Allowance. The real question is whether to take it all at once (PCLS) or leave it inside and get 25% of every withdrawal tax-free instead (UFPLS): this calculator compares both routes with the Hundred Summers app's own function. Your figures never leave your browser.
Loading the calculator… (requires JavaScript; your figures never leave your browser)
Worked example
Computed when this page was built by the same engine that runs the calculator above, so the figures below and the live tool can never disagree. Change any input above to see your own.
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Pot | £400,000 |
| Income drawn a year | £20,000 |
| Tax rate in retirement | 20% |
| Growth | 5.0% |
| Years | 20 |
| Results | |
|---|---|
| Maximum tax-free lump sum | £100,000 (allowance £268,275) |
| Net income a year (lump sum up front | £16,000 |
| Net income a year) UFPLS slices | £17,000 |
| Better route on these figures | Lump sum up front |
| By | £80,000 |
The next question
Take it now or leave it in the pension? →Tax-free cash: now or later
Or answer it with everything else: the full Hundred Summers plan connects your pay, pensions, savings, property, tax and spending year by year, and stress-tests them across 500 simulated market histories.
Read the guides
- Optimising your plan: every lever, which ones apply to you, and how they fit together →The overview of every way a UK retirement plan can be improved (tax while you work, where your savings go, how you draw it down and what your estate pays) with a decision tree that finds the levers relevant to you, the combinations that pull against each other, and how to test them in Hundred Summers. Each lever links to the guide that goes deeper. Education, not advice.
- UFPLS, drawdown or annuity: the three ways to take pension income →How the 25% tax-free entitlement works differently under UFPLS and flexi-access drawdown, what crystallisation means, the £268,275 lump sum allowance, and where annuities fit: the mechanics behind the choice.
- The MPAA: the £10,000 trap that outlasts the decision that sprang it →Take one flexible pension withdrawal and your annual allowance drops from £60,000 to £10,000: permanently, with no carry-forward. What triggers the Money Purchase Annual Allowance, what doesn't, and who it ambushes.
- The first pension withdrawal: emergency tax and how to avoid it →Why a first flexible withdrawal is over-taxed on a month-1 code, a worked £30,000 example, the three reclaim forms, the small-first-payment trick and the case for spreading withdrawals across tax years.
- The 25% tax-free lump sum: take it now, take it in slices, or leave it →The £268,275 lump sum allowance, PCLS versus UFPLS, the recycling rule, why the recurring 'take it before the Budget' panic usually costs money, and how April 2027 changes the case for leaving it in.
The decision most people rush
The tax-free lump sum is the single biggest cheque most people ever handle, and the default, take the lot at 55 and move it to a savings account, is often the worst-priced option: money that was compounding tax-free starts earning taxed interest, and from April 2027 it counts toward inheritance tax while pension money doesn't until then. The calculator's comparison prices exactly this: lump sum reinvested outside versus quarters released as you draw.
Neither route is “right”: a mortgage to clear or a bridge to the State Pension are real reasons to take cash up front, and certainty has value a spreadsheet can't price. What matters is deciding on the arithmetic, not habit. The full Hundred Summers plan models your actual tax-free entitlement year by year (PCLS, UFPLS, phased drawdown, the LSA cap) inside your whole plan, alongside the drawdown calculator and the UFPLS vs drawdown guide.