Claiming last 5 years' tax relief on pension contributions

GSDPenny

My husband has paid into a personal pension since he was 18 - with steadily increasing payments. He's 51 now.

We've just realised that for the last 5 years, he's been a higher rate tax payer, but that nothing has been done about the payments into his pension - they're still just attracting 20% relief.

I imagine it will involve a call to HMRC in the morning, but does anyone know if and how the tax relief from the last 5 years can and will be paid?

He has a couple of other pensions which have all been dealt with by salary sacrifice, so I assume will be OK, it's just the personal pension that has been overlooked.

BoGoF

They will likely need evidence of the contributions and you can only go back 4 years. Did he complete Tax Returns?

GSDPenny

No tax returns for the last 5 years unfortunately. But no problem producing evidence of contributions.

BoGoF

So he should send in the evidence and will receive a refund for tax years up to 5/4/17. For current and future yeara his tax code will be updated

GSDPenny

Thank you. That sounds straightforward.

Does that mean he will probably have to fill in a self-assessment again from now on? He ran his own company for about 5 years, but went back to full time employment about 15 years ago and was relieved when they gave up requesting self-assessments about 10 years ago.

BoGoF

No, he shouldn't need to, unless he has other criteria such as child benefit charge or income over £100k

GSDPenny

Promising news. Thank you. Neither of those triggers so that we should be fine.

Thank you for your time and your swift replies.