Guidance

Pension schemes newsletter 111 - June 2019

Published 26 June 2019

1. Relief at source

a. Annual return of information for 2018 to 2019

We want to remind scheme administrators that the deadline for submitting the 2018 to 2019 annual return of information is 5 July 2019. If you do not submit this on time it will hold up interim claims for the tax month ending 5 July 2019 and any subsequent months until we receive your annual return of information.

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

If failure occurs on the third submission we will stop all future interim claims until a further re-submission is received and is deemed successful.

You can only submit your 2018 to 2019 annual return of information through Secure Data Exchange Service.

b. Notification of residency status report for 2020 to 2021 - technical specifications

Earlier this month we circulated the technical specifications for the notification of residency status report to scheme administrators on our mailing list, to give more information about the format of your January 2020 report. We’ve included these technical specifications at Appendix 1 of this newsletter.

2. Master Trusts supervision

Now the Master Trust authorisation window has closed for existing Master Trusts, The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is publishing an updated list of the schemes that have been authorised so far.

Once Master Trusts are authorised, TPR will supervise them on an ongoing basis.

Master Trusts need to satisfy TPR through the supervision process that they continue to meet the authorisation criteria and other legislative requirements.

What authorised Master Trusts can expect from supervision

If you’re an authorised Master Trust, you’ll receive an introductory letter from TPR shortly after your Master Trust has been authorised.

Supervisory activities for all Master Trusts will include periodic scheme evaluations, reviewing significant event and triggering event notifications, and reviewing submissions such as scheme funder accounts and the supervisory return.

How often TPR interacts with authorised Master Trusts will depend on a range of factors including the size of a scheme, and the particular risks or issues which are present. When the authorisation of existing schemes is complete later this year TPR will provide more information to Master Trusts about the timescales and intensity of supervision for their specific scheme, including if the scheme will be assigned a dedicated supervisor.

You can find out more about master trust supervision on TPR’s website.

3. Managing Pension Schemes service

a. New features added to the service

In Pension Schemes Newsletter 109 we told you that we’d update the service in June 2019 so that you can change some of your scheme details online.

On 4 June 2019 we added features to the Managing Pension Schemes service so that you can change:

• the scheme establisher details
• director details
• trustee details

We’ve updated our GOV.UK guide Manage a registered pension scheme to reflect these features. This release marks the end of Phase One delivery of the Managing Pension Schemes service. We’re now starting work on designing and delivering Phase Two of the service and this will focus on delivering pension scheme reporting through the new service.

We’ll keep you updated on this work in future pension schemes newsletters.

b. User research

We’re still looking for feedback to help improve the Managing Pension Schemes service. If you’re interested in taking part in research and giving us feedback, you can join the Managing Pension Schemes user panel.

As a member of the panel, you’ll only be contacted about the Managing Pension Schemes service.

4. Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) equalisation - HMRC working group

We explained in Pension Schemes Newsletter 108 that we we’ve created an HMRC GMP Equalisation Working Group. The group met in May and June to consider the pension tax issues that may arise as result of GMP equalisation and is scheduled to meet again in early July 2019.

The group is currently focusing on what certainty can be delivered within the existing legislation and supported by guidance where appropriate. We’re making good progress in exploring a number of approaches and are considering these to ensure they have the desired outcome and avoid potential unintended tax consequences. This make take some time so it’s unlikely we’ll be able to update guidance before the autumn.

We also know the issues can be complex and it’s possible that we may not be able to resolve these by using the existing legislation, however HMRC is committed to finding a pragmatic and proportionate outcome to all of the pension tax issues.

We will continue to provide further updates on progress through this newsletter.

5. Telling HMRC about pension tax charges on the SA100 tax return

We’ve received feedback that pension scheme members are not sure how to give us details if more than one pension scheme is paying an amount of their annual allowance charge or overseas transfer charge.

The ‘additional information’ box previously at box 21, page Ai4 on the 2018 version of the SA101 for 2019 has been removed. Instead for 2019, your pension scheme members should provide the additional details in the ‘any other information’ box on page TR7 of the 2019 SA100 Tax Return.

Your members can find more information about how to tell us about pension tax charges on their Self Assessment return in the HS345 Self Assessment helpsheet for 2019.

Appendix 1 - guidance on receiving your Notification of Residency Status Report

1. Introduction

The purpose of this document is to describe the standard format in which scheme administrators will receive their notification of residency status report in January each year.

HMRC are required to provide a residency status for relief at source scheme members and will use the data submitted on the previous year’s annual return of information to tell you the correct relief at source rates to apply to your scheme members in the following tax year. We will provide a residency status for all members we are able to trace.

2. Explanation of additional fields

HMRC will replay information submitted on the annual return of information but with additional information. This will be two additional columns, Residency Status and Corrected National Insurance number.

Where HMRC identifies that the National Insurance number was incorrect or omitted, we will provide the correct National Insurance number, along with the original National Insurance number to enable scheme administrators to match the individual scheme member back to their dataset. We will only do this if we can match or trace the individual on HMRC systems based on the information provided.

Where HMRC is unable to identify the individual scheme member, the letter ‘U’ will be added to the residency status field to indicate we are unable to trace the individual and scheme administrators will have to operate the rest of the UK status.

Where the scheme administrators have received updated information for an unmatched ‘U’ member they can use the look up residency status for relief at source service to check for a status. Scheme administrators should ensure the annual return of information is corrected for the next submission with any updated member information. HMRC may be in touch to discuss the unmatched individuals.

3. Physical data

3.1 General

The file will contain variable length field ‘Delimited’ records in ASCII format. The field delimiter used is: ‘|’. Also attributes in each record will conform to the following standards:

• text fields will be left justified with trailing space removed
• numeric date fields will be DDMMYYYY
• where a field has no value it will appear as ‘||’

3.2 Report layout

The filename used for each Notification of Residency Status Report will be constructed as follows:

OE-NNNNNN.R_PNNNN_NN_YYYY.txt

Where:

• ‘OE-NNNNNN’ is the unique HMRC reference for the electronic transfer, the numbers will increase so additional digits should be accepted
• ‘PNNNN_NN’ is the unique HMRC scheme administrator reference
• ‘YYYY’ is the 4 digit tax year number

An example Notification of Residency Status Report name will look like:

OE-000000.R_P0000_00_2019.txt

4. Data format

4.1 Record layout

Column	Attribute name	Mandatory, Optional or Conditional	Format	Comment
1	HMRC Scheme Administrator Ref	M	Text (8)	Allocated by HMRC (format = PNNNN/NN)
2	Scheme/ Administrator Name	M	Text (50)	If more than one scheme = administrator name. Single scheme = scheme name.
3	Tax Year	M	Number (4)	The year in which the period of the return ends (e.g. year ending 5 April 2019 = 2019).
4	Pension Scheme Reference (PSTR)	M	Text (10)	The reference issued by HMRC on registration of a scheme. This will always be 10 characters, the format is 8 numeric digits followed by ‘R’ and another alpha character.
5	Member Title	M	Text (10)	Title component (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Doctor)
6	Member Forename(s)	M	Text (50)	Members Forename(s)
7	Member Surname	M	Text (50)	Members Surname
8	Member National Insurance number	C	Text (9)	National Insurance number of member.
9	Reason for no National Insurance number	C	Text (100)	Reason no National Insurance number was provided. NOTE: IT developers can write this field as ‘NULL’.
10	Property Name or Property Number & Street	M	Text (40)	Member address (Line 1)
11	Address Line 2	M	Text (40)	Member address (Line 2)
12	Address Line 3	C	Text (40)	Member address (Line 3)
13	Address Line 4	C	Text (40)	Member address (Line 4)
14	Address Line 5	C	Text (40)	Member address (Line 5)
15	Member Postcode	C	Text (8)	Member address (Postcode)
16	Member DOB	M	Date (8)	Member Date of Birth (format = DDMMYYYY)
17	Member Gender	M	Text (1)	Male = M Female = F Unknown = U Not Disclosed = N
18	Status	M	Text (1)	Employment Status (Values 1-9).
19	Rate of Relief	C	Text (1)	Residency status used for the member during the tax year: Scottish = S Welsh = C rUK = Null (Space/blank) NOTE: IT developers can write this field as ‘NULL’.
20	Individual Contribution	M	Text (6)	Total amount of individual contribution, rounded to the nearest pound.
21	Life Assurance Premium Contribution	M	Text (6)	Total amount of life assurance premium contribution, rounded to the nearest pound, re: lump sum payable on death made for the tax year relating to this return.
22	Total Amount of Transfer Payment Received	M	Text (8)	Total amount of transfer payment received, rounded to the nearest pound.
23	Value of Members Fund	M	Text (8)	Total amount of monies, assets and investments held for the member on a particular date, rounded to the nearest pound.
24	Date of Fund Valuation	M	Date (8)	The date used to value the members fund (format = DDMMYYYY)
25	Residency Status	O	Text (1)	S - The individual has a Scottish residence. C - The individual has a Welsh residence. U - The individual has not been traced. ‘Empty’ - the field will be left empty as the individual has a residence status in the rest of the UK. NOTE: IT developers can write this field as ‘NULL’.
26	Corrected National Insurance number	O	Text (9)	Corrected National Insurance number given where HMRC has identified the National Insurance number was incorrect or it was omitted and have been able to trace the correct National Insurance number. Format in alpha numeric AANNNNNNA The ninth character could be an alpha character if present or left blank. NOTE: IT developers may need to consider writing this ninth character to accept a ‘NULL’.

4.2 File examples

Member 1:

• has supplied a HMRC Scheme Administrator Reference
• has supplied a Pension Scheme Tax Reference (PSTR) is 10 character (issued on registration of Scheme)
• has supplied a National Insurance number
• has included all address lines
• has supplied a Rate of Relief - ‘S’
• Residency Status ‘S’
• corrected National Insurance number not entered

Member 2:

• has supplied a HMRC Scheme Administrator Reference
• has supplied a PSTR is 10 character (issued on registration of Scheme)
• not supplied a National Insurance number
• has supplied a reason for no National Insurance number
• only supplied Mandatory Address Lines (Property Name or Property Number and street, Address Line 2) and postcode
• has not supplied a Rate of Relief
• Residency Status ‘blank’ (such as, has a residence status in the rest of the UK)
• corrected National Insurance number entered (Set to matched National Insurance number as no supplied National Insurance number)

Member 3:

• has supplied a HMRC Scheme Administrator Reference
• PSTR is 10 characters (issues on registration of Scheme)
• has supplied National Insurance number
• has included all address lines
• Rate of Relief not supplied as 2018 version of annual return of information submitted
• Residency Tax Status ‘C’
• corrected National Insurance number entered (Set to matched National Insurance number as incorrect National Insurance number supplied)

Member	Content
1	P0000/21| PSCHEME| 2019| 00000000RA| DOCTOR| JANE| SMITH| QQ123456A| | 1 THE AVENUE| ALINE2| ALINE3| ALINE4| ALINE5| PC1 1PC| 01011950| F| 1| S| 100| 0| 0| 100| 06072018| S|
2	P0000/21| PSCHEME| 2019| 00000000RA| MR| JOHN| KING| | REASON NO NINO| 1 THE COTTAGE| THE CITY| | | | AA11 1AA| 25081995| M| 3| | 999999| 0| 99999999| 99999999| 01102018| | QQ123456A
3	P0000/01| PSCHEME| 2019| 00000000RA| MRS| ANNE| ANDERSON| QQ123456A| | LINE1| LINE2| LINE3| LINE4| LINE5| PC2 2PC| 02021966| F| 9| | 100| 200| 0| 300| 02082018| C| QQ123456A

5. Contact

If you have any issues, queries or feedback about this document, contact reliefatsource.administration@hmrc.gov.uk and put ‘RAS Technical Specification – Query’ in the subject of the email.