Government rules out review into impact of pension tax relief

The Public Accounts Committee’s recommendation that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) should conduct a review into the impact of pensions tax relief has been ruled out by government.
In its response to the committee's report on the management of tax reliefs, the government rejected proposals that HMRC should formally evaluate the impact of pension tax reliefs in order to fully understand their effectiveness.
The committee had been concerned that HMRC did not understand the impact of reliefs on pensions - which were forecast to cost £38bn in the 2018/19 tax year - and did not systematically evaluate the effectiveness of many of the reliefs intended to change behaviour.
But HM Treasury said the government had already undertaken several major consultations on aspects of pensions tax relief over the last few years - including the wide-ranging Strengthening the Incentive to Save consultation in 2015, which found "no clear consensus for reform".
The government did, however, back a number of the committee's other recommendations - including one saying that HMRC should publish data showing who is benefiting from pensions tax relief and split this data by income; groups with protected characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity; people working in the public and private sectors; and people in defined contribution and defined benefit schemes.
The government said it agreed with this recommendation and would, by December next year, publish data showing who is benefitting from pensions reliefs "to the extent data is available" - but noted there was insufficient data available to produce statistics on all protected characteristics as HMRC was reliant on data collected by third parties. HM Treasury said the government is working towards improving the information that it publishes on pensions tax reliefs.
More on Law and Regulation
DWP delays consultation response on trustee oversight of investment consultants
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has delayed further a consultation response and final regulations to enact requirements relating to investment consultants.
Pensions minister sets out timetable for Pension Schemes Act regulations
Pensions minister Guy Opperman has set out a timetable for secondary legislation to bring Pension Schemes Act provisions into force.
What a ban on corporate directors could mean for schemes
Shane O'Reilly and Julia Chirnside look at how a government proposal could put professional trustees in breach of the law.
MPs to investigate advice in ongoing pensions freedoms inquiry
MPs on the Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) will assess the availability of financial advice in the second stage of its pensions freedom inquiry.
TPR publishes full details of charity pension trustee fraud case
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has published a regulatory intervention report on the case of jailed former charity for the disabled trustee and chief executive Patrick McLarry.