Public Accounts Committee adds to pressure on government to look more closely at pensions tax relief anomaly for the lowest paid

The report criticises HMRC and HM Treasury for being ‘insufficiently curious about the impact of some key tax reliefs on different groups’ and recommends that HMRC should publish more detailed data showing who benefits from pensions tax relief.

Victoria Todd, Head of LITRG, said:

“We welcome the Public Accounts Committee drawing attention to the issue of low-income workers missing out on tax relief on their pension contributions. This is an issue we have been drawing attention to for some time.

“Its recommendation of publishing more data is helpful in terms of making the issue more transparent so that policymakers can understand the impact, which – according to the existing data – shows that many more women are affected than men.³

“However, we would like to see government taking action to address the issue. The Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto promised a review⁴ and we were expecting publication of a call for evidence in the spring. While it is understandable that this was delayed due to the impact of coronavirus, we hope that progress will quickly be made as we start to see those immediate pressures easing.”

^Notes

^{1. House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, Management of tax reliefs, Twelfth report of session 2019-21, HC 379 – see page 5, conclusions and recommendations point 2.}
2. LITRG’s 2020 Budget Representation (https://www.litrg.org.uk/latest-news/submissions/200204-budget-representation-2020-net-pay-action-group) sets out why many low-income workers in pension schemes operating on a ‘net pay’ basis miss out on tax relief on their contributions and effectively pay 25% more for their pension savings than those in otherwise equivalent circumstances who contribute to a ‘relief a source’ basis scheme.
3. Latest available figures (Written Parliamentary Question HL2729: https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Lords/2020-03-18/HL2729/) give an estimate of 1.5million people in net pay pension schemes missing out on tax relief as they are earning below the personal allowance. However, this figure is for 2017/18 when the personal allowance was £11,500 which then rose to £11,850 for 2018/19 and the £12,500 for 2019/20 (frozen too for 2020/21), so the figure may well be higher than 1.5million now. The PAC report quotes an estimate of 1.75million, with three quarters of those being women.
4. Conservative Party manifesto 2019, page 16: https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative%202019%20Manifesto.pdf “A number of workers, disproportionately women, who earn between £10,000 and £12,500 have been missing out on pension benefits because of a loophole affecting people with net pay pension schemes. We will conduct a comprehensive review to look at how to fix this issue.”

^{Contact: Chris Young, External Relations Manager, 07900 241 584 [email protected]. 
Out of hours contact: George Crozier, 07740 477 374}