Guidance

Pension schemes newsletter 102 - August 2018

Published 30 August 2018

1. Manage and Register Pension Schemes service

a. Partnerships using the service

Following the launch of the Manage and Register Pension Schemes service in June 2018, we’ve updated the service so that partnerships can now use the service to register as a scheme administrator and/or apply to register a pension scheme. To register a partnership as a pension scheme administrator, you’ll need the partnership Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) and details of the individual partners (including their name, address, National Insurance number and Self-Assessment UTR).

b. Giving access to the service to Government Gateway Administrators and assistants

Once you’ve enrolled for the Manage and Register Pension Schemes service, make sure that you assign the service through your Government Gateway account to any of your other Government Gateway administrators or assistants using the same scheme administrator ID. You must do this before they log in to use the Manage and Register Pension Schemes service

Assigning the service to your administrators before they log in will help prevent the service treating them as a new scheme administrator and asking them again for the enrollment information that you’ve already completed. If they complete a second enrollment under the same scheme administrator ID, this will cause errors on HMRC systems and no user will be able to access the service under this scheme administrator ID.

To assign the Manage and Register Pension Schemes service through your Government Gateway account, should select Pensions Online Digital Service HMRC-PODS-ORG from the assign services page.

c. Cleansing your current Pension Schemes Online details

In pension schemes newsletter 91 we offered to help you check your scheme administrator records and registered pension scheme records and tell us if there are any that don’t need moving across to the new service.

If you’re a scheme administrator and you’re unsure of your scheme or administrator ID details, you can ask us for a list of:

• your scheme administrator IDs
• the schemes of which you’re the administrator

You must send us a separate request for each of these and provide the following information.

List of scheme administrator IDs

You must provide:

• the scheme administrator name
• the scheme administrator address including postcode
• a contact telephone number
• an email address

You should send requests by email to: pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘List of my scheme administrator IDs’ in the subject line.

List of registered pension schemes attached to your scheme administrator ID

You must provide:

• the scheme administrator name
• the scheme administrator ID
• a contact telephone number
• an email address

You should send this information by email to: pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘List of my registered pension schemes’ in the subject line.

We’ll validate the information you provide and may ask for more information before we provide any scheme or scheme administrator details.

You should use the information to check your records and tell us of any scheme administrator IDs or schemes that you no longer need.

d. User research

We’re continuing to develop the service and new features that we’re working on include:

• associating other scheme administrators to your scheme
• adding yourself as a scheme administrator
• viewing your scheme’s details
• viewing your details as scheme administrator

If you can help us with our user research on the development and design of these new features, email us at: pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘Manage and Register Pension Schemes service – user research’ in the subject line of your email.

If you have used the Manage and Register Pension Schemes service and would like to provide feedback on this, you can email us at: pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘Manage and Register Pension Schemes service – feedback’ in the subject line of your email.

2. Relief at source

a. Annual returns of information for 2017 to 2018

Annual return of information – interim repayments

As we explained in the pension schemes relief at source for Scottish Income Tax newsletter - February 2018 the annual return of individual information is a statutory return from 6 April 2018 for pension scheme administrators operating relief at source.

The deadline for submitting your 2017 to 2018 annual return of information to HMRC has passed, but we know that there are still returns outstanding from scheme administrators who have submitted interim repayment claims for 2017 to 2018. Any subsequent interim repayments will be withheld, pending receipt of the outstanding information.

If you submit your annual return of individual information but your return fails processing, we’ll still deem this to be outstanding and will stop any subsequent interim repayments pending successful re-submission.

If your submission fails for a third time we’ll stop all future interim repayments to your scheme until a further re-submission is received and is deemed successful.

Annual return of information – residency status reports

It’s also really important that you successfully submit your annual return of information for 2017 to 2018 by 30 September 2018. This is because we’ll use this information to provide you with your notification of residency status reports in January 2019.

Successful submission by 30 September 2018 will ensure that we can give you the correct residency status for your members on your January 2019 notification of residency status report. You can then use this to give your members tax relief from 5 April 2019 and claim the right amount of repayment from HMRC.

b. Relief at Source Annual Claims (APSS106) for 2017 to 2018

Pension schemes operating relief at source are reminded that they must submit the APSS106 annual claim for 2017 to 2018 to HMRC by 5 October 2018.

If you have not submitted your APSS106 by 5 October 2018, we will not process any interim repayment claims until you have successfully submitted your form.

If you’re completing your APSS106 for the tax year 2017 to 2018 (or earlier) you should use the APSS106 – for annual claim periods 2017 to 2018 and earlier.

You should use a different version of the APSS106 for the 2018 to 2019 tax year and you can also find this on GOV.UK.

3. Master Trusts

As we explained in pension schemes newsletter 101 a new authorisation regime comes into effect for Master Trusts from 1 October 2018.

New Master Trusts

If you’re applying to register your pension scheme with HMRC after 1 October 2018 and your scheme is a Master Trust, you must also apply to The Pensions Regulator for authorisation at the same time. HMRC will not register the scheme until it has been authorised by The Pensions Regulator.

HMRC can refuse to register a pension scheme that is a Master Trust and does not hold this authorisation.

Existing schemes becoming Master Trusts

If you’re an existing registered pension scheme on 1 October 2018 and your scheme status changes to become a Master Trust after this date you must tell HMRC within 30 days of this on the APSS578 form and you must also apply for authorisation from The Pensions Regulator.

You can find more information about reporting pension scheme events in the Pensions Tax Manual at PTM161100.

If existing Master Trusts or existing registered pension schemes that become Master Trusts do not obtain authorisation, they will not be able to operate and will have to wind up.

HMRC will be able to de-register a scheme which is a Master Trust and does not receive or subsequently loses its authorisation from The Pensions Regulator.

You can find more information about Master Trust authorisation on The Pensions Regulator’s website.

4. Reporting of non-taxable death benefits

In pension schemes newsletter 98 we explained that we’ve been working to resolve the problem of P6 tax coding notices that are issued in error for death benefit payments that are entirely non-taxable.

We’re aiming for this to be fixed in September and we’ll provide an update on this through our pension schemes newsletters.

We can confirm that until this fix is in place, you should continue to follow the guidance we gave you in pension schemes newsletter 78.

5. Applications to register a pension scheme

When you apply to register a pension scheme with HMRC we may ask you for more information about your application.

We’ll tell you if we have further questions or need additional information and will write to you setting out the information that you need to provide. To make sure you send us the right information you should wait until you’ve received our letter and check the information that we’ve asked for, for each application.

If you do not provide the information that we’ve asked for we’ll reject the application to register a pension scheme and you may have to submit your application again through the Manage and Register Pension Scheme service.

To avoid delay in dealing with your application, include your full submission reference number in all correspondence with HMRC. We tell you this through the Manage and Register Pension Scheme service when you’ve successfully submitted your application to register the pension scheme. Your submission reference number is an S followed by 10 digits.

You can find more information in our GOV.UK guide apply to register a pension scheme.