Administrators of relief at source pension schemes
11 September 2017
We would like to highlight a reminder to pension scheme administrators from HMRC; the following was published in their recent pension schemes newsletter 90.
“a. Secure data exchange service (SDES) enrolment
In pension schemes newsletter 89 we reminded you that if you’re a pension scheme administrator (PSA) of a relief at source pension scheme who doesn’t currently submit your annual return of individual information electronically, you must send us some details. This is so that we can help to enrol you onto SDES.
We also explained that we needed this information by 31 July 2017 to give us time to co-ordinate your enrolment with our SDES project team.
We’ve set out the information we need you to provide in Appendix 1 of this newsletter.
Whilst lots of you have contacted us with your details, there are still PSAs of relief at source schemes who haven’t provided us with this information.
If you haven’t provided us with your details please send the information in Appendix 1 of this newsletter to us as soon as possible using email: [email protected] and put ‘Relief at source - SDES enrolment details’ as the subject line.
It’s really important that PSAs of relief at source pension schemes are enrolled onto SDES. This is because in January 2018 we’ll send you a notification of residency tax status of your individual members on SDES so that you can give the right amount of tax relief to your members and claim the right amount of repayments from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
We need this information by 30 September 2017. Failure to provide us with this information and enrol onto SDES will mean you will not receive a Notify RAS report and you’ll have to default to give relief at source at the UK rate for all your members for 2018 to 2019, unless you choose to use the residency tax status look up service.
In pension schemes newsletter 88 we explained that we’d use this information to help you enrol onto SDES. To give us more time to register you onto the SDES system, we’ll register you on Secure Electronic Transfer (SET) first. You won’t be charged for this.
Once we’ve processed your information we’ll provide you with a secure reference number on SET that you’ll need to complete the enrolment process and you’ll keep your secure reference number when we migrate you to SDES.
We’ll contact you with full instructions when we start this process and you can find more information on this in Appendix 2 of this newsletter.
We have received a number of queries from PSAs asking if outsourced companies should be enrolled separately for SDES. We can confirm that whoever files the annual return of individual information must enrol for SDES either through the above process or through automatic migration if already registered for SET. For example, a separate company outside of your organisation who does not use SET but submits an annual return of individual information on your behalf by other means (for example, on a CD or USB), must enrol for SDES.
Scheme administrators who don’t provide this information by 30 September 2017 and aren’t enrolled on SDES in time, will not receive the notify RAS Report in January 2018.”