Lifetime achievement awards

Psoe

My partner is being given a lifetime achievement award and I want to know if this award will be taxable. I rang HMRC and they didn't know!

Darksparkle

Who is giving her this award?

Psoe

The is a prestigious award in the specialist field in which my partner works.

[Deleted User]

Some clues here:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2551709/I-just-won-5-000-industry-award-Do-I-pay-tax-it.html

I think darksparkle was trying to establish whether or not the award was made by an employer.

Psoe

No it wasn't his employer. Thanks for the link - that does seem to imply that it will be tax free. I will try to get confirmation from HMRC.

jimmo

Don’t know how important this is to you but following your post at #3 it took me less than a minute of googling to put a name to your partner. You might want to edit your post to say something like “a prestigious award in the specialist field in which the winner works.”
I see that your partner is referred to as “professor” and a “director”. Certainly for HMRC, both those titles strongly imply the existence of an office or employment within the specialist field and the lifetime achievement award received is a recognition of how well (s)he has done their job and is therefore taxable.
HMRC are not your best source of information here. They, absolutely, cannot discuss your partner’s personal tax affairs with you.

Darksparkle

Personally I would write to HMRC about it rather than calling the helpline.

It's hardly going to be a common question for the helpline so it doesn't surprise me that they wouldn't know.