Guidance

Pension schemes newsletter 125 – October 2020

Published 30 October 2020

1. Temporary changes to pension processes as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19)

1.1 Re-employment in response to the coronavirus outbreak

When we published the last newsletter we were unable to provide an update on temporary easement relating to re-employment in response to the coronavirus outbreak. We can now confirm that the protected pension age easement will expire on 1 November 2020 in accordance with current legislation.

2. Managing Pension Schemes service

2.1 Managing Pension Schemes service – financial information

On 21 October 2020 we added a section on ‘charges and payments’ to the scheme record on the Managing Pension Schemes service. So, for each AFT return you submit using the service you’ll be able to see:

• charge type
• amount due
• charge reference
• status (for example if the payment is overdue or if interest is accruing)

You’ll be able to click into each charge for that AFT quarter and see the:

• original amount due
• payments and account credits
• amount under review, if relevant

This will also provide you with the date the amount is due by and we’ll tell you if interest is accruing relating to a charge. You’ll be able to click through to view details of this.

If you amend your AFT return and it increases the amount due, you’ll get a new charge reference that you should use when you pay the additional amount.

If you amend your AFT return and this reduces the overall charge for that return you:

• will not receive a charge reference for the amendment
• can ask us to balance your account by sending an email to pensions.administration@hmrc.gov.uk

Note that the amount shown as due on the service may not reflect any amounts paid in the previous three days.

You can find more information in our GOV.UK guide Submit an Accounting for Tax (AFT) return using the Managing pensions schemes service - GOV.UK.

3. Relief at source declaration – APSS590

We want to remind pension scheme administrators that the APSS590 annual return of information declaration forms part of your annual return of information. Even if you have successfully submitted your 2019 to 2020 annual return of information via SDES, we will deem your return to be outstanding if you have not also submitted your declaration. So we’d encourage scheme administrators to submit outstanding APSS590s as soon as possible.

As we explained in Pension Schemes Newsletter 121, to help scheme administrators having difficulty obtaining wet signatures on APSS590 declarations from authorised signatories, for now HMRC will accept scanned APSS590 declarations:

• emailed by the authorised signatory – in this circumstance we will accept the claim without a signature
• signed and emailed by someone else providing we also receive a separate email directly from the authorised signatory authorising them to submit the claim

You should email these to reliefatsource.administration@hmrc.gov.uk and put ‘APSS590 – relief at source annual return declaration’ in the subject line of your email.

4. Pension flexibility statistics

The quarterly release of official statistics on flexible payments from pensions for the period 1 July 2020 to 30 September 2020 has now been published.

HMRC can now give more information on the number of tax repayment claim forms processed for pension flexibility payments.

From 1 July 2020 to 30 September 2020 we processed:

• P55 = 7,267 forms
• P53Z = 3,552 forms
• P50Z = 1,232 forms

Total value repaid: £39,439,262

Figures for the period 1 October 2020 to 31 December 2020 will be published in January 2021.

5. Signing in to online services

In the last few newsletters we’ve explained that we’re starting an ongoing programme of deleting credentials (user ID and password) for users who have not signed in to a tax service for 3 years. This means that anyone who has not logged into their Business Tax Account in the last three years will have their Government Gateway credentials deleted.

We want to reassure pension scheme administrators and practitioners that we will not delete the scheme administrator ID or associations with pension schemes and this will not affect the scheme administrator records that we hold on either the Managing Pension Schemes service or the Pension Schemes Online service. However, without action these scheme administrators will be unable to access their scheme or scheme administrator records on our pensions tax services.

To avoid this and ensure that Government Gateway credentials remain active, scheme administrators should log into their Business Tax Account as soon as possible.

We’ll publish more information on what scheme administrators should do if their Government Gateway credentials are deleted on GOV.UK and in a future pension schemes newsletter. However, recovering deleted Government Gateway credentials is not a quick process so we are encouraging all scheme administrators to log into their Business Tax Account now to avoid this process and so that they will be able to continue to access our pensions tax services.

Scheme administrators who have lost their log-in details, can reset these by selecting this option from the Government Gateway Account log-in page.

For those trustees who are no longer the scheme administrator, for example if they do not have any active pension schemes on either of our pensions tax services, we’d encourage them to de-enrol from our pensions tax services.

6. Registration statistics

For the period 6 April 2020 to 30 September 2020 HMRC received in total 764 applications to register new pension schemes. This is a 4% reduction compared to applications received in the same period last year.

Of these applications, 66% have been registered and HMRC has currently refused registration for about 13% of applications. No decision has yet been made on the remainder.