Guidance

Wind up a pension scheme

Submit an Event Report to HMRC to declare that a scheme has ceased to exist.

Winding up a pension scheme means the scheme ceases to exist.

The scheme assets will either be:

  • transferred to other pension schemes
  • used to buy annuities to provide the members with their benefits

How to declare that a scheme has ceased to exist

If the pension scheme has wound up, you must report this to HMRC within 3 months of the scheme wind up completing.

You must continue to meet all information reporting requirements until you tell HMRC of the wind up.

You’ll need to submit an Event Report to HMRC on the Managing Pension Schemes service. In the Event Report you’ll need to give the date the scheme completed winding-up.

Published 16 September 2014
Last updated 19 September 2023 + show all updates
  1. All Event Reports must now be submitted on the Managing Pension Schemes service. Instructions to email 'pensions.administration' have been removed.

  2. All Event Reports must now be emailed to pensions.administration@hmrc.gov.uk. Instructions to submit a report through the Pension Schemes Online service have been removed.

  3. Information about how to wind up a pension scheme has been added.

  4. Sentence added to advise scheme administrators with a Pension Scheme Tax Reference beginning with '2' to contact Pension Schemes Services if they want to report the wind up of a service.

  5. First published.