Guidance

Pension schemes newsletter 99 - May 2018

Published 30 May 2018

1. Pension Schemes Online service

From 6pm on 1 June 2018 you will not be able to register as a pension scheme administrator or apply to register a pension scheme using the Pension Schemes Online service.

From 4 June 2018 you’ll be able to use our new Manage and Register Pension Schemes service for:

• pension scheme administrator registrations
• applications to register a pension scheme

HMRC is updating the guides on GOV.UK and will publish a bespoke newsletter on 4 June 2018 with more information about the launch of the new service.

2. APSS262 form

In Pension Schemes Newsletter 97 HMRC explained that there was a problem with the validation on the APSS262.

HMRC has fixed this issue.

3. Event report – reportable events 22 and 23

HMRC explained in Pension Schemes Newsletter 79 that there’s an incorrect legislative reference on the online event report for ‘Annual Allowance Pension Savings Statement Information - Member and Aggregate Pension Input Amount Details’.

We provided the correct legislative reference in Pension Schemes Newsletter 79 and updated the descriptions for reportable events 22 and 23 in our GOV.UK guide send pension scheme reports.

If you’re reporting event 23, you have to report the individual’s details under event 22 to get to event 23.

4. Genuine errors

HMRC has been asked about our genuine errors guidance in the Pensions Tax Manual (PTM) at PTM146000. We’ve reviewed this guidance and want to give you clarification.

For taxation purposes, you can apply the genuine errors guidance to the actions of an independent financial advisor (IFA) or other agent where all of the following apply:

• there’s a clear authority for the IFA or agent to act on behalf of the member
• there’s a clear instruction from the member as to what form the transaction should take
• as a result of a clerical error the form of the transaction is not what the member intended
• the error is spotted and reported to the scheme immediately
• had the error been made by the member the scheme administrator would have applied the genuine error guidance

If in these situations you’ve restored the position of the scheme member to the state it was before the error took place and then the transaction undertaken as originally intended, this would fall within the genuine errors guidance in the PTM.

You cannot apply the genuine errors guidance where:

• the member has changed their mind
• the error is more than clerical
• the IFA or agent has given advice they now regret and wish to undo the transaction

5. Relief at source for Scottish Income Tax

a. Submitting your schedule of excess relief

In Pension Schemes Newsletter 97 HMRC explained our transitional arrangements for submitting information about excess relief. If you’re telling us about excess relief, you must submit a schedule in accordance with Regulation 10(5) of The Registered Pension Schemes (Relief at Source) Regulations 2005 (Statutory Instrument 2005 No 3448).

You can attach the schedule to your interim or annual claim for relief at source or you can email this to us at pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘Excess relief schedule’ in the subject line of your email. We recommend that you password protect your schedule and give us the password in a further email.

If you prefer to send the password to an alternative HMRC email address, you should use pensions.administration@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘Excess relief schedule - password’ in the subject line of your email.

b. APSS105 form

HMRC explained in Pension Schemes Newsletter 96 that the APSS105 has been updated.

We want to remind pension scheme administrators that you should use the latest version of the APSS105.

We’ve received a number of interim claims for the claim period 6 April to 5 May 2018 submitted on the old APSS105 and in these cases we’ve asked scheme administrators to resubmit these using the current APSS105.

If you submit future interim claims using the old version of the APSS105 we’ll reject the claim and you’ll have to resubmit your claim by post, using the current version of the form. This may delay payment of your interim relief at source claim.

c. Annual return of individual information for 2017 to 2018

As you’ll be aware, the 2017 to 2018 annual return of individual information is due to reach HMRC by 5 July 2018.

For some of your members we may have given you a corrected National Insurance number in the notification of residency status report that we gave you in January 2018. We only corrected the National Insurance number for members where the suffix was incorrect.

If you’re currently completing your 2017 to 2018 annual return of individual information, you may choose to use the corrected National Insurance number using the suffix we gave you, or if only the suffix is different you can leave the National Insurance number as it is appears in your records.

We’re looking to amend the next notification of residency status report so that we will not correct the National Insurance number if only the suffix is different.

We’ll provide more information about the January 2019 notification of residency status report in future pension schemes newsletters.

6. Look up residency status for relief at source

a. Launch of the look up residency status for relief at source service

The residency status look up service is now available for all pension scheme administrators. To use the look up service, you must have a Government Gateway account with a pension scheme administrator or practitioner ID to sign in.

You can find out more information about the Government Gateway on GOV.UK.

Once you have set up your Government Gateway account you can use the look up residency status for relief at source service from the GOV.UK guide Check a pension scheme member’s residency status for relief at source.

You can ask questions whilst using the service by using the ‘Feedback’ or ‘Get help with this page’ links and we’ll answer these within our normal turnaround times.

We’d also like your feedback on the service. You can leave feedback when you sign out of the service, or you can email us at pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘Look up residency status for relief at source – feedback’ in the subject line of your email.

b. Development of an application programming interface (API) solution

HMRC explained in Pension Schemes Newsletter 98 how you and your developers can access our API external test environment.

We’ve published API documentation to help your developers use our test environment. Your developers can find this documentation on GOV.UK in the HMRC developer hub.

You can ask questions whilst using the test environment by using the ‘Feedback’ or ‘Get help with this page’ links and we’ll answer these within our normal turnaround times.

We’d like your feedback on this API. You can leave feedback when you sign out, or you can email us at pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘Look up residency status for relief at source – API feedback’ in the subject line of your email.