Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how much the Treasury provided in tax relief to UK pension schemes in each of the past ten years.

HMRC publishes figures relating to tax relief for registered pension schemes in Table 6 of the publication series ‘Personal pensions: contribution and tax relief statistics’. Table 6 (published in 2019) contains information for the years 2012 to 2013 through 2017 to 2018. Please see below:

The above figures reflect the net cost of tax relief on pension contributions and any investment growth within pensions, less the tax paid on payments from pension schemes to those accessing their pensions that year. Also, please note:

i. The figures are based on HMRC administrative data and information compiled from a variety of sources by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Costs are subject to large revisions and have a particularly wide margin of error.

ii. The cost of the tax relief is calculated as the tax that would be paid on contributions to registered pension schemes presuming they were not registered and the payments were subject to the normal tax rules applying to individuals' remuneration. The estimates do not represent the yield from withdrawing tax relief as there would be significant changes in taxpayers' behaviour.

iii. Figures for tax liabilities on pensions in payment are now calculated using administrative taxpayer data on RTI payments made by pension schemes.

Historical figures relating to older years are available on the national archive (see relevant figures below), however due to substantial revisions to methodology, figures for these years are not comparable with 2012 to 13 onwards.