Guidance

Pension schemes newsletter 138 ― April 2022

Published 29 April 2022

1. Relief at source

1.1 Relief at source for 2022 to 2023

In the Spring Budget 2022, the government confirmed that the Income Tax rate for 2022 to 2023 for England and Northern Ireland will continue to be the same as for 2021 to 2022.

For 2022 to 2023, the:

• basic rate is 20%
• higher rate is 40%
• additional rate is 45%

As there are no changes to the rates for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales for 2022 to 2023, you should continue to operate relief at source as you do now.

1.2 Annual return of information for 2021 to 2022

The deadline for submitting the 2021 to 2022 annual return of information is 5 July 2022. If you do not submit this on time, it will delay:

• interim claims for the tax month ending 5 July 2022
• any claims for subsequent months until we receive your annual return of information

Make sure you submit the APSS590 Annual return of information declaration with your annual return of information. If you do not submit it, your return will fail processing.

If your annual return of information fails processing, we’ll:

• still consider this to be outstanding
• stop any subsequent interim repayment claims until we receive a re-submission

If failure occurs on the third submission, we’ll stop all future interim claims until we receive a further re-submission that is considered successful.

You can only submit your 2021 to 2022 annual return of information through the Secure Data Exchange Service.

You can either:

• send the APSS590 annual return of information declaration by post
• email the APSS590 annual return of information to reliefatsource.administration@hmrc.gov.uk (write ‘APSS590 Annual return of information declaration’ in the subject line)

2. Annual allowance calculator

As part of our annual updates, we’ve amended the annual allowance calculator to include the tax year 2022 to 2023.

We’ve added in the 2022 to 2023 tax year so that any members of defined contribution schemes, who make their total contributions early in the tax year, can work out their annual allowance tax charge.

Other members can use the annual allowance calculator after the end of the tax year, when they know what their total pension savings will be.

3. Scheme Pays reporting

The Registered Pension Schemes (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022 have been made and laid.

You can find more information about these regulations in the accompanying Explanatory Memorandum and the Tax information and impact note for Scheme Pays reporting.

For reporting tax charges on the Accounting for Tax (AFT) return, normal reporting deadlines apply, unless the notice is received after 31 December in the year following that in which that tax year ended. If the deadline has passed, you should report the charge on the next available Accounting for Tax return.

For the event report, normal reporting deadlines apply, unless the Pensions Savings statement is issued after 31 January following the tax year to which the statement relates. If the deadline has passed, you should report within 3 months of the date the statement was issued by amending the report for the relevant tax year.

We’ll update the Pensions Tax Manual to include these changes in due course.

Thank you to those industry representatives who provided feedback on the draft regulations.

4. Non-taxable payments following a member’s death and Real Time Information (RTI) reporting — charity lump sum death benefits

The Pension (Non-Taxable Payments Following Death)(Real Time Information) Regulations 2021 came into force with effect from 6 April 2022.

In Pension schemes newsletter 131, we provided an update on the reporting of charity lump sum death benefits.

There is no requirement to report charity lump sum death benefits through RTI.

We’ll let you know when the regulations have been amended in a future newsletter.

5. Pension scheme migration

Take action now to migrate your pension schemes to the Managing Pension Schemes service.

In Managing pension schemes service newsletter — April 2022, we told you that pension scheme administrators can now migrate pension schemes from the Pension Schemes Online service to the Managing Pension Schemes service.

Find further guidance on how to migrate your pension schemes to the Managing Pension Schemes service.

6. Accounting for Tax (AFT) returns

You can no longer compile and submit new Accounting for Tax returns for any quarter from 1 April 2020 onwards on the Pension Schemes Online service.

If you need to submit a return for the quarter 1 January 2022 to 31 March 2022, you must migrate your pension scheme to the Managing Pension Schemes service in time to compile and submit the return by the filing deadline of 15 May 2022.

Find information on how to submit an AFT return using the Managing Pension Schemes service.

7. Registration statistics

For 2021 to 2022, HMRC received in total 1,591 applications to register new pension schemes.

Of these schemes, 79% have been registered and we have refused registration for 13% of applications. No decision has been made on the remainder yet.

Since 2012 to 2013, there has been an 89% decrease in the number of applications to register for pension schemes.

8. Pension flexibility statistics

In March 2022, HMRC updated Table 9, ‘Flexible Payments from Pensions’ of the ‘Personal and Stakeholder Pensions’ National Statistics publication.

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

From 1 January 2022 to 31 March 2022, we processed:

• P55 ― 4,693 forms
• P53Z ― 1,903 forms
• P50Z ― 816 forms

Total value repaid: £22,317,529

The tax repayment figures for the period 1 April 2022 to 30 June 2022 will be published in Pensions schemes newsletter ― July 2022.