I hope you can help me with the following situation. I am 68 and in receipt of an Irish State pension, a UK occupational pension, a US social security pension and an Irish annuity.
My issue is with the UK pension, which related to work I did for an Irish-registered, Irish-domiciled company, whose head office/parent was based in the UK.
I have received the UK occupational pension since the age of 60. For roughly the first five years, no UK tax was deducted. About three years ago, payments were transferred to a company called Aptia (before that I think it was Mercer). Since then, UK tax has been deducted on the gross pension.
I have never lived nor worked in the UK. I never registered for a UK national insurance number, but Aptia says one has been issued to me. I seem to have tax-free allowance in the UK, so tax is applied each month to the full (gross) amount of the pension.
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I report the net amount that I receive to Revenue in the return I make each year which also includes my US pension, based on the money received by my Irish bank account. I do not currently declare that UK tax has been deducted (as I don’t know if I can, or should).
Am I actually liable to pay UK tax on this pension? If not, how can I reclaim the tax already paid and stop future deductions? (I cannot find a UK phone number that works from outside the UK. HMRC’s online system rejects my NI number because I cannot provide a related – UK – postcode!)
If I am liable in the UK, does Revenue allow me to offset the UK tax against any Irish liability or if I don’t have a liability to get that money back?
I estimate I lose just under £1,000 per year in UK tax. Is this money gone, or can I recover it?
Mr GB
Being Irish, having pensions in multiple countries has always been something of an occupational risk.
In the old days, when people emigrated and stayed in their new country of residence for life, it was not really an issue, but certainly since the 1980s, it has been quite common for people to head abroad for work, often moving between countries and then returning home here to Ireland at some point.
And that means you leave a patchwork of pension funds in your wake.
Liability to tax in Ireland is determined by your (tax residence) and domicile. In very basic terms, if, as you are, a person is resident and domiciled in Ireland, you are liable to Irish income tax on your worldwide income.
Someone who is tax resident in Ireland but not domiciled here is liable to Irish tax only on income arising in Ireland, such as from work, pensions, rent, dividends etc, income earned from a foreign employer if that money relates to work carried out in Ireland and any other foreign income that is brought into the State.
People who are neither tax resident nor domiciled in Ireland are the same as tax residents, except they do not have to worry about tax on foreign income brought into the State.
So, you are liable to tax in Ireland on all your earnings – and that means your gross UK pension, not the net amount after UK tax. That sounds like it might create an issue for you concerning your Revenue filings for the past three years but there is a qualification to Irish liability to tax – it is subject to any relief due under the terms of a double taxation agreement.
And we have one of them with the UK.
Generally, under such agreements, there is a provision that your country of residence will allow a credit against your tax liability here in relation to any tax deducted in the other country.
However, under the double taxation agreement between Ireland and the UK, there is also a specific measure relating to pensions. It states, among other things, that “pensions and other similar remuneration paid in consideration of past employment to a resident of a contracting state and any annuity paid to such a resident shall be taxable only in that state.
Resident of a contracting state means one of the two parties to an agreement. And those “other things”, well, that relates to government work (local or national) for which pensions are taxed in the state where that work was done. But even then, if you are an Irish citizen and not also a UK citizen, UK pensions for government-related work would also be taxed here, not in the UK.
So, no, you should not be liable to pay income tax in the UK on this UK occupational pension.
And this is where I get annoyed because this is not a new agreement; it has been in force since 1976. So there is no reason why the UK revenue and the people paying your UK occupational pension should not be aware of it.
Aptia sells itself as “a specialist company that focuses on administration for pensions and benefits, with a global presence and a team of experienced and passionate professionals”.
Is it possible you could be UK tax resident? It is, but they know they are communicating with an Irish bank and an Irish address. And if there was a proper handover from the previous pension manager, they should be aware that certain pensions were being paid gross up to that point.
So, at the very least, they should have known that there were queries to be made before arbitrarily taxing you in the UK – and possibly advice for you as a member of a scheme they managed if you were required to act in any way to ensure that happened.
I’d love to say this is a one-off, but I had a similar situation previously with a large, publicly listed UK firm. And despite making the case to them that the pension involved was not liable to tax in the UK, they insisted on continuing to do so.
There are only two possible reasons for this: either these pensions specialists do not train their people properly or they simply do not care. Neither is very encouraging.
Your situation is even more daft. Not only are you not now a UK resident (for tax purposes), you have never been resident in the UK – to the extent that you were unaware you even had a national insurance number.
Recouping your money
So what now?
The good news is that you should be able to reclaim the tax paid over the past three years in the UK and ensure that Aptia henceforth pay your UK occupational pension to you gross. It will then be taxed here in Ireland.
The bad news is twofold. One, you need to amend your Irish tax returns for the relevant years, as you are liable here for tax on the gross UK pension, not the net amount.
Second, as I can attest from going through the process, it can take well over a year (literally) to get this sorted with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). However, it appears the system has been streamlined somewhat since I fought my way through it a decade ago.
The first thing you need to do is download Form IRL-Individual, which can be found here. You will see an accompanying file with notes on how to complete the form. Take the time to make sure everything is correct, or it will only be sent back to you, delaying things.
Importantly, although this is a HMRC form, you must return it to the Irish Revenue in the first instance – at whatever office deals with your income tax affairs.
They need to stamp and sign the form to confirm you are an Irish tax resident, and they then send the form direct to their UK counterparts.
Once the UK is happy with the details, they will refund any tax deducted in error in past tax years – Ie up to April 2025 – to your Irish bank account. They will also confirm your status with Aptia, which should then arrange for repayment of any tax deducted from your UK pension in the current UK tax year and pay your UK pension into your Irish bank account gross going forward.
- Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com, with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice
