Guidance

Pension schemes newsletter 135 — November 2021

Published 30 November 2021

1. Relief at source

1.1 Notification of residency status report for 2022 to 2023

As explained in Pension Schemes Newsletter 132, scheme administrators of a relief at source pension scheme should have successfully submitted their annual return of information for 2020 to 2021, by 30 September 2021. This was to make sure we provided your notification of residency status report in January 2022.

As this deadline has now passed, if you have not successfully submitted your annual return of information for 2020 to 2021, we will not be able to provide you with a residency report in January 2022. However, it’s still important that you submit your 2020 to 2021 return as soon as possible, otherwise we may stop your subsequent interim payments.

1.2 Receiving your notification of residency status report

If you’ve successfully submitted your annual return of information for 2020 to 2021, in January 2022, we’ll tell you the residency tax status of your scheme members, so that you can apply the correct rate of relief at source to your scheme members in the tax year 2022 to 2023.

From mid-January 2022, you’ll be able to download your notification of residency status report from the Secure Data Exchange Service (SDES). Your report will be based on data from your 2020 to 2021 annual return of information. We’ll send you an email when we start to release the notification of residency status reports. If you want to be added to our mailing list, email reliefatsource.administration@hmrc.gov.uk using ‘Relief at source ― mailing list’ in the subject line.

You’ll also receive an email through SDES when your file is available for you to download. You’ll have 6 days to download this (144 hours), starting from when we make the file available to you.

You should check that your email address is up to date on SDES and if not, you should update this to avoid delay in accessing your report.

We’ll provide further guidance on what you’ll need to do if you do not receive your report, or there are issues with your report, in a future newsletter.

1.3 If you do not receive a notification of residency status report

If you do not receive a residency report in January 2022, you can check your members’ residency status for relief at source by using our look up service. You can check the residency tax status for single or multiple members, or default to the UK basic rate for your members.

If you do not have a residency status for a member by the time you claim relief at source on their first contribution in a tax year, you must treat them as having a ‘rest of UK’ residency status. You must not apply a tax rate based on the member’s address.

Once you’ve used a residency status to claim relief at source for a member, you must use this for the whole of the tax year.

2. Pension scheme migration

2.1 Viewing your list of pension schemes

On 18 November 2021 we added a new feature to the Managing Pension Schemes service. This feature allows scheme administrators to view a list of pension schemes they need to migrate on to the service. Currently it’s a ‘read only’ list. You will not be able to migrate any pension schemes at this point.

You can find further information on this in our GOV.UK guide Migrating your pension scheme to the Managing Pension Schemes service and in the Managing Pension Schemes Service Newsletter ― November 2021.

2.2 Scheme administrator IDs that are no longer in use

If you’re registered as a pension scheme administrator on the Pension Schemes Online service and are not acting for any pension schemes, and do not intend to in the future, you’ll need to contact us so that we can delete your ID from the service.

Email migration.mps@hmrc.gov.uk and put ‘Scheme administrator ID deletion’ in the subject line. You’ll need to provide your scheme administrator name and ID.

3. Accessing your business tax account

In Pension Schemes Newsletter 134, we told you that we’ve introduced multi-factor authentication when accessing your business tax account to improve security across our services.

We’ve also introduced an additional security feature. You’ll need to verify your email address and add a recovery word when accessing your business tax account, if you have not already done so.

You’ll be asked to do this after you’ve completed multi-factor authentication.

4. Annual allowance ― members declaring their annual allowance charge on their Self Assessment tax return

We’d like to ask you to remind members who’ve exceeded their annual allowance for 2020 to 2021, and who do not have sufficient unused annual allowance to carry forward to cover the excess, to declare this on their Self Assessment tax return. They’ll need to do this even if your scheme is paying the tax charge.

The Pension savings ― tax charges (Self Assessment helpsheet HS345) has specific information on declaring the annual allowance charge on Self Assessment returns.

Your members can also find information and guidance about annual allowance, carrying forward unused annual allowance and paying and declaring the annual allowance charge on GOV.UK. They can use our pension annual allowance calculator.

5. 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’re due a refund, follow the guidance Pension schemes refund or reallocation request.