Check a pension scheme member's residency status for relief at source

As a pension scheme administrator using relief at source, you’ll need to know the residency status of each of your scheme members. You can then give them the right tax relief and reclaim it from HMRC.

You must use the residency status information provided by HMRC. You can find this in your annual notification of residency status report for existing members. It can take up to 2 tax years for a new member to be included on your annual report.

The annual report uses the information you supplied on your annual return of individual information. If you did not submit the return for the previous tax year, you will not have received an annual report to use for the following tax year.

You should use the look up residency status for relief at source service if your member does not appear on your annual notification of residency status report.

If your member has had the wrong amount of tax relief, we’ll contact them directly to correct it.

Find an existing member’s residency status

You should use your annual notification of residency status report, which HMRC will make available in January each year. You can download this from the Transfer files securely with HMRC service.

We’ll send you an email each year when your annual notification of residency status report is available for you to download. When you access the secure file transfer service, make sure the email address for this notification is correct.

If you successfully submitted more than one annual return of individual information, you’ll receive a report for each annual return you submitted.

What your annual report will tell you

The report will give your members’ residency status to use for the next tax year. You’ll get a residency status for each member that you included on your previous year’s annual return of information. The ‘Residency tax status’ column shows:

• ‘S’ — Scottish residency status
• ‘C’ — Welsh residency status
• a blank field — rest of UK residency status (resident in England and Northern Ireland)
• ‘U’ — the member has not been matched to a National Insurance number

The report may provide a different National Insurance number for a given member in an extra field. If so, you must use this to update your records.

Make sure you use the correct report to continue to give tax relief to your members in the current year. You must apply the same tax rate for a member for the whole of the tax year, even if their residency status changes on the next report.

You should contact us by email if you:

• cannot open your report because the file is corrupt
• did not download the report in time

Find a new member’s residency status

You’ll need to know the scheme member’s:

• first and last name
• National Insurance number
• date of birth

If a member changes their address details with HMRC, there can be a delay before the service shows the updated residency status.

To look up residency status online, you’ll need:

• sign in details (you can create these if you do not have them)
• a pension scheme administrator or practitioner ID

You can either:

• look up a single member
• carry out a search for multiple members, by uploading a specific file

Look up service search results

Every residency status search will have one of the following results:

• Scotland
• Wales
• England and Northern Ireland
• residency status cannot be displayed

Once you use a residency status to claim relief at source for a member, you must use this for the whole of the tax year. You must not change a member’s residency status for the current tax year after you’ve made a claim for relief at source, even if a later search returns a different residency status. You should keep a copy of the results page.

If you use the look up service between mid-January and 5 April each year, we’ll also give you the residency status of your member for the next tax year. You’ll be able to use this to give the correct rate of relief at source for the next tax year to members who are not on your annual report.

Members without a residency status result

Where a member does not have a residency status of Scotland or ‘rest of UK’ in the annual report or look up service, you’ll need to check you’ve got the correct details.

A residency status also will not be shown for members who have died. If this has resulted in you giving too much relief at source to the member, you’ll need to tell HMRC how much.

If you think all the information you have is correct, your scheme member will need to contact National Insurance: enquiries to check their details.

If you do not have a residency status for a member by the time you claim relief at source on their first contribution, you must treat them as having ‘rest of UK’ residency status.

Members not covered

If your member:

• is under 16 years old, treat the residency status as England, Northern Ireland or Wales
• is 16 years old or over and does not have a National Insurance number, they’ll need to apply for a National Insurance number

For these scheme members you’ll need to use the ‘rest of UK’ residency status for relief at source purposes.