Tax Advantaged Life Assurance Plan

BellyButtonFluff

I took out around 10y ago a "tax advantaged life assurance plan" from Zurich. In essence, HMRC pays some of the policy premium (basic rate relief) direct. So the cost to me is slightly reduced. These sorts of plans were only available for a relatively short time, but my understanding is that it is OK as I get a statement every year showing this HMRC contribution.

I understand that I can claim higher rate tax-payer relief, as I am such a person, I don't believe the legislation changed on these pre-existing policies

I've done all the bits on my FYE2016 Self Assess apart from this. I have, I regret, never claimed it before (since the basic relief is only about £50 the additional higher rate relief is probably about the same)

However I am completely lost which tax section this might go. Any ideas?

BBF

Dal_Whinnie

I assume that this is a personal pension term assurance policies. Tax relief was removed from such policies in December 2006, but policies in existence at that time were grandfathered (i.e you can still get relief). You should claim relief at higher rates on your self assessment return but be aware of overall limits, etc (also see https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-your-private-pension/pension-tax-relief)

Dal_Whinnie

I believe that you should include it under box 1 of your tax Return in the section for tax reliefs for payments to registered pension schemes. However, the notes to the Tax Return for this section state that you should not include any amounts for personal term assurance contributions but the HMRC guidance notes on what is a personal term assurance policy states

For your contribution to be a personal term assurance contribution, two conditions must be met. These are:
• your scheme uses a non-group life policy to insure the provision of your
death benefits under the scheme, and
• the policy is not a protected policy, because it was started after certain
dates. ‘

Your policy appears to be a protected policy so is therefore not personal term assurance so should not be excluded from box 1 (i.e you include the gross premium under box 1 of the section for pension reliefs.

If you have not claimed it before you might want to include a comment in the notes to your return