Obtaining my salary history to draw down Private Pension

Stravaiger93

I have two private pension pots from employment in the 1990s that I want to cash in over the next few years. The pension company has told me that I have to provide historical details of salary and benefits from the company over a number of years prior to 2006. They have advised me to contact HMRC for this information, only available by telephone and always busy.

If anyone here can help, I have two questions:

1) Why does the pension company make this a condition of my accessing my pots ? They have waffled something about how the information might increase the tax free portion of my drawdown by a significant amount.

2) Is there any other way to obtain these historical records from HMRC (the company I worked for is long defunct) ?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

Stravaiger93 said:

I have two private pension pots from employment in the 1990s that I want to cash in over the next few years. The pension company has told me that I have to provide historical details of salary and benefits from the company over a number of years prior to 2006. They have advised me to contact HMRC for this information, only available by telephone and always busy.

If anyone here can help, I have two questions:

1) Why does the pension company make this a condition of my accessing my pots ? They have waffled something about how the information might increase the tax free portion of my drawdown by a significant amount.

2) Is there any other way to obtain these historical records from HMRC (the company I worked for is long defunct) ?

For information that old I suspect you will only be to access it via a (free) Subject Access Request.

The normal HMRC helpline won't be able to help.  Even 2016 might be a stretch for them!

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hmrc-subject-access-request

JoeCrystal

Stravaiger93 said::

1) Why does the pension company make this a condition of my accessing my pots ? They have waffled something about how the information might increase the tax free portion of my drawdown by a significant amount.

It is no waffle! There are schemes with protected tax free portion in the past.

Stravaiger93

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

For information that old I suspect you will only be to access it via a (free) Subject Access Request.

The normal HMRC helpline won't be able to help.  Even 2016 might be a stretch for them!

Thank you, I tried that today, but the automated response wasn't inspiring. In short their reply may take many months, and they maintain the right not to provide information if they don't feel they have a statutory requirement to. It's just not an appropriate way to access the information.

I'm still interested in any explanation regarding Question 1. I wonder how any calculation would work, that would increase my tax free portion from 25% 'up to as much as 90%' (quoted from phone conversation).

Furthermore they initially told me this only applies to my 'Executive' pension, but my 'Personal' pension appears to be similarly blocked.

dunstonh

1) Why does the pension company make this a condition of my accessing my pots ? They have waffled something about how the information might increase the tax free portion of my drawdown by a significant amount.

This would indicate that it has protected tax free cash in excess of 25%.     This is not waffle but important.   

It was common on EPPs and prior to 2006, you could build up a greater entitlement than 25% but it was based on earnings.   Other types of pension can have protected tax free cash but they are not normally linked to earnings.

 2) Is there any other way to obtain these historical records from HMRC (the company I worked for is long defunct) ?

Are we to assume that you have no kept your P60s or March payslips?     Whilst many do.   It's surprising how many don't when you consider how easy it is to retain electronic copies of documents nowadays.  Maybe they too think that important things are just waffle.

At the end of the day, if you dont retain the data, then its unlikely anyone else would have it.  Although a financial adviser may, if you used one.   Sometimes, back then, advisers would take a copy of the payslip or P60 as evidence of what you could pay into a pension.    If not, the provider will just have to go with the limited data they have and you will need to accept you may not get as much out tax free as you thought.

xylophone

See

https://techzone.abrdn.com/public/pensions/Tech-guide-scheme-specific-tfc

The simplest way to identity these members is to ask the scheme administrator. They may be able to confirm immediately if the member has protected tax free cash. If not, they may need additional information in order to calculate A-Day tax free cash.

To calculate a member's A-Day tax free cash entitlement the scheme administrator will need details of the member's salary and bonus history in the years prior to A-Day. The scheme administrator may also ask for details of pension benefits held in other schemes at that time.

Obtaining this historical information can be difficult if the member has not kept records. If this information cannot be found they may not be able to protect tax free cash. In this situation, tax free cash will be limited to 25% of the fund.

Individuals may be entitled to scheme specific protection from several schemes from different employments. These entitlements will be calculated independently of each other. But if they relate to the same employment, the calculation may be different.

Pat38493

xylophone said:

See

https://techzone.abrdn.com/public/pensions/Tech-guide-scheme-specific-tfc

The simplest way to identity these members is to ask the scheme administrator. They may be able to confirm immediately if the member has protected tax free cash. If not, they may need additional information in order to calculate A-Day tax free cash.

To calculate a member's A-Day tax free cash entitlement the scheme administrator will need details of the member's salary and bonus history in the years prior to A-Day. The scheme administrator may also ask for details of pension benefits held in other schemes at that time.

Obtaining this historical information can be difficult if the member has not kept records. If this information cannot be found they may not be able to protect tax free cash. In this situation, tax free cash will be limited to 25% of the fund.

Individuals may be entitled to scheme specific protection from several schemes from different employments. These entitlements will be calculated independently of each other. But if they relate to the same employment, the calculation may be different.

So just thinking out loud, if it turns out that nobody else than the individual has the records, what's to stop the individual from re-creating them with whatever numbers they guess it should have been?  Technically this might be fraud if the numbers are wrong, but nobody could prove it because according to Dunstoh, nobody else has the info.

Or to put it a different way, if they had bank statements or company records from that time, they could reverse engineer the numbers from net payments.

I'm not suggesting OP should do this but the thought did occur....

Dazed_and_C0nfused

But HMRC does (in most cases) have the info.

xylophone

what's to stop the individual from re-creating them with whatever numbers they guess it should have been?  Technically this might be fraud 

Only technically?

And I suspect that the pension provider having raised the question will not be content with any old  "back of a fag packet" figures....

If the OP cannot meet the provider's standard of proof, I imagine that to protect their own position, they'll revert to the default.

Pat38493

xylophone said:

what's to stop the individual from re-creating them with whatever numbers they guess it should have been?  Technically this might be fraud 

Only technically?

And I suspect that the pension provider having raised the question will not be content with any old  "back of a fag packet" figures....

If the OP cannot meet the provider's standard of proof, I imagine that to protect their own position, they'll revert to the default.

By which I meant that if no other records existed whatsoever anywhere, it would not be possible to succeed in a criminal conviction against the person because it wouldn’t be possible to prove that the numbers were wrong.  

In any case you are probably right that they would do some kind of validation on the information somehow.

Stravaiger93

Thanks for all useful replies.

It seems collectively you're getting the point. The pension company is not asking for documents, but figures.

However,

1) I have no intention of misrepresenting my earnings in any way,

And,

2) - even if I did ;0) - I'm sure that after the pension company had made any extra tax free calculations they would be checked carefully against my records by HMRC.

Thanks xylophone for link.