Guidance

Newsletter 172 — August 2025

Published 21 August 2025

Personal Pension Relief — evidence requirement changes

From 1 September 2025, we will be lowering the threshold for requiring evidence in support of new requests for higher rate or additional rate relief claims to be given through an individual’s tax code for the current year. As a result, some individuals may be asked to provide evidence where it would not previously have been required.

Additionally, telephone requests will no longer be accepted for Personal Pension Relief claims. Individuals must now submit claims online or by letter.

We do not anticipate any changes to your processes, as you already provide your members with the necessary information to support their claims. However, be aware that these updates may lead to increased enquiries as individuals adjust to the new requirements.

The GOV.UK guidance on how to claim tax relief on your private pension payments will be updated when the change takes effect.

Public service pension remedy — mandatory scheme pays deadline for active and deferred members

We are aware that some schemes are still issuing statements relating to the public service pension remedy. So that those members do not lose out, ministers have now agreed to move the mandatory scheme pays deadline to 6 July 2027 to align with the deadline for pensioner members. This will apply to all members that have already submitted a scheme pays election to HMRC as part of the public service pensions remedy for the tax years 2019 to 2020 through to 2022 to 2023 where they missed the original deadline for mandatory scheme pays of 6 July 2025. 

We intend to include provisions to this effect in our next set of regulations and we expect all remedy scheme pays elections to be treated as mandatory until the new, later date. GOV.UK guidance for scheme administrators and affected members will not be updated until the regulations are in effect. However, HM Treasury have agreed to extending the deadline before the regulations have been enacted and you should treat the deadline as 6 July 2027 from now on.

Lifetime Allowance protections and enhancements — authenticated look up service — how you can help us

We are looking for pension scheme administrators and pension scheme practitioners to test the new authenticated look up service, which allows users to view a member’s Lifetime Allowance protections and enhancements. 

If you expect to need to view one or more protections and enhancements for members between 16 September 2025 and 23 October 2025, we would like to invite you to take part in a research session with one of our user researchers to gather feedback on using the new service.   

The session is likely to last up to an hour and can be carried out either over Microsoft Teams or face-to-face.  
   
If you are interested in taking part, contact us at this email address: mohammed.alom@digital.hmrc.gov.uk. Include ‘Private Beta Research’ in the subject line.

Relief at source

Annual return of information

The deadline for submitting your annual return of information and APSS590 declaration for 2024 to 2025 to HMRC has passed. However, there are still returns outstanding from scheme administrators who have submitted interim repayment claims in 2025 to 2026.

If a 2024 to 2025 annual return of information was due for your scheme and is still outstanding, any subsequent interim repayments will be withheld until we receive both the:

• outstanding return
• APSS590 declaration

We want to remind pension scheme administrators that it’s important to use the right naming convention when submitting an annual return of information for 2024 to 2025. Using the wrong references on either the file name or within the annual return itself will mean our systems will reject your submission and you’ll have to resubmit the return.

You can find details of how you should name your files in the:

• relief at source spreadsheet
• electronic flat text file specifications

Consolidated claims

In the ‘Relief at source’ section of the pension schemes newsletter 170 — May 2025 we told you that we are working on improving the payment process for relief at source pension schemes, and for schemes currently submitting consolidated claims, each pension scheme will need to be registered under an individual relief at source reference.

We have been working with pension schemes that submit consolidated claims and have now issued schemes with new relief at source references to be used for claims for the 2026 to 2027 tax year onwards. We will issue updates in future pension schemes newsletters if we need any further information from schemes.

If you have a consolidated claim but have not heard from us, email reliefatsource.administration@hmrc.gov.uk and put ‘consolidated claim’ in the subject line.