Guidance

Managing pension schemes service newsletter – August 2021

Published 16 August 2021

1. Declaring as pension scheme administrator for a retirement annuity contract and deferred annuity contract

We’ve updated the Managing pension schemes service so you can declare as a pension scheme administrator for a retirement annuity contract and deferred annuity contract. You’ll no longer be able to do this on the Pension schemes online service.

You can find updated guidance and a link to the Managing pension schemes service at Apply to register a pension scheme.

If you’re registered as a pension scheme administrator with an ID beginning with ‘A0’ and you haven’t already enrolled for the Managing pension schemes service, you’ll need to do this before you can declare as a pension scheme administrator for a retirement annuity contract and deferred annuity contract. You can find guidance on how to enrol at Manage a registered pension scheme.

Once you’ve declared yourself as scheme administrator for a retirement annuity contract and deferred annuity contract, you’ll immediately be able to view the Pension Scheme Tax Reference and you’ll be able to:

• compile, submit and amend Accounting for Tax returns
• view financial information for the retirement annuity contract and deferred annuity contract
• authorise a practitioner to act on your behalf for the retirement annuity contract and deferred annuity contract

2. Submitting an Event Report

If you need to submit an Event Report for a scheme that is registered on the Managing pension schemes service, including retirement annuity contract and deferred annuity contracts, email pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gov.uk using ‘Event Report – Managing Pension Schemes’ in the subject line. Please confirm in your email which events you need to report.

3. Migration

In our Managing pension schemes newsletter – March 2021 we provided an update on the migration of pension schemes from the Pension schemes online service to the Managing pension schemes service. We told you, later this year, scheme administrators will be able to view a list of pension schemes they need to migrate on to the Managing pension schemes service.

This will be available from 19 October 2021.

Only schemes with a status of ‘open’ on the Pension schemes online service will be included in the list. At this point, it will be a ‘read only’ list.

We’ll continue to work with you to check that all your pension schemes are listed as expected and provide further guidance on this, in future newsletters.

If you currently hold multiple scheme administrator IDs, please make sure you read about the actions you need to take in readiness for migration.

If, by the 19 October 2021, you have completed the process of setting up your ‘master’ and ‘ancillary’ scheme administrator IDs you’ll be able to view the list of all open pension schemes under all of these IDs on the Managing pension schemes service.

3.1 Future migration releases

In Managing pension schemes newsletter – March 2021 we told you in Spring 2022, scheme administrators will have the ability to select schemes from the list on the Managing pension schemes service and provide up to date information on them. We’ll confirm the date of this release in a future newsletter.

3.2 Wound up pension schemes

All pension schemes with a status of ‘open’ on the Pension schemes online service will be included on the list of pension schemes you’ll need to migrate. If you’re a pension scheme administrator of pension schemes that have wound up and you’ve not told us about these, email migration.mps@hmrc.gov.uk using ‘Managing pension schemes – Wound Up Schemes’ in the subject line.

4. Accounting for Tax return

We want to remind you when you’re paying your Accounting for Tax return charges, you should use the charge reference provided for that quarter. This will make sure your payment is correctly allocated to the charge.

On the Managing pension schemes service, if you submit an amendment to your Accounting for Tax return that increases the amount due, you’ll receive a new charge reference for the additional amount.

If you submit an amendment that means you are due a refund, please follow the guidance Pension schemes refund or reallocation request.

5. How you can help us

We’re still looking for people to help us improve the Managing pension schemes service and help test the upcoming migration features.

You can take part in user research and give us feedback by joining the Managing pension schemes user panel. As a member of the panel, we’ll only contact you about the Managing pension schemes service.

You can email your feedback to pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gov.uk using ‘Managing pension schemes service – feedback’ in the subject line.

6. Signing into online services

We want to remind you to make sure you sign into your Business Tax Account regularly. If you do not sign into your account for 3 or more years, your Government Gateway credentials will be deleted.

You can find guidance on how to recover access to the Pension schemes online service in section 1.4 of the Pension schemes online: User guide.

If your credentials are deleted, we will not delete your scheme administrator ID, practitioner ID, associations or authorisations with pension schemes.

7. Updating your details

If you have enrolled for the Managing pension schemes service, make sure you keep your scheme administrator and practitioner details, including correspondence address, up to date on both the Pension schemes online service and Managing pension schemes service.

If you do not keep your address up to date on the Managing pension schemes service, you may be prevented from accessing your pension schemes until you have provided us with an updated address.