Claim tax relief on your private pension payments

Who can claim

To be eligible to claim tax relief you must be:

• an intermediate rate taxpayer or a higher rate taxpayer that pays into a personal or workplace pension
• a basic rate taxpayer that pays into a workplace pension but the employer does not or will no longer claim tax relief
• a basic rate taxpayer that pays a lump sum into a personal or workplace pension that is not under a net pay scheme

A net pay scheme is where the employer takes your pension contributions from your pay before any tax is deducted.

What you’ll need

To claim tax relief on your personal and workplace pension payments, you’ll need to know:

• your National Insurance number
• the type of pension
• the name of the pension provider
• the net amount of pension contributions for each tax year you’re claiming for
• your payroll number or reference number

You’ll need to upload or send proof fromfor youreach pensiontax provideryear ofyou paymentsclaim madefor. forThis eachcan taxbe yeara you’reletter claimingor for,statement wherefrom anyyour ofpension theprovider, followingor apply:a payslip from your employer. This proof must include:

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• youdetails of the pension contributions paid aand lumpthe sumtax year they relate to 
• evidence that you arereceived a20% basictax raterelief taxpayerautomatically andfrom noyour taxemployer relief— hasif beenyou’re claimedclaiming atfor sourcea workplace pension

How to claim

Claim online

You’ll need to sign in with your Government Gateway user ID and password (if you do not have a user ID, you can create one when you first try to sign in).

You can save your progress and come back later.

Claim now

Claim by post 

You must send us a letter if you’re:

• unable to claim online
• an agent acting on behalf of a client

You’ll need to include all the information from the ‘what you’ll need’ section in your letter.section.

After you’ve claimed

We will review your claim and contact you within 28 working days.

You can check when you can expect a reply from HMRC.

If you need to change your claim

You can make a change to your claim after you submit it, for example because you need to add another pension. If you do this you will need to provide details for all the pensions you added previously, including any new ones. This will replace your previous claim for the selected tax year only.

If you need to make changes to multiple tax years, you’ll need to do this separately for each tax year affected.

You can also remove pension details for a selected tax year but this will cancel your claim for that year.

Online claims

You’ll need to use the same Government Gateway user ID and password that you used to make your initial claim.

You can make changes to the information you submitted. You should do this as soon as possible by signing into the service and selecting the relevant option to make changes.

Claims by post

You must send us a letter with all the details you want to add or remove from your claim, for each tax year affected.