Nearing State Pension age

When you’re nearing State Pension age you’ll receive a P161 ‘Pension enquiry’ form from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) asking for details of your age and income, including pension income. It’s very important that you complete and return this as it will enable them to work out what allowances you’re entitled to and how much tax (if any) you should be paying.

If you don’t return the form your tax code might be wrong. For example, your state pension counts as taxable income but it will be paid to you without tax taken off. HMRC will only know whether you need to pay any tax once they have received your form. If you start off by not paying tax when you should, you may have to repay the tax owed later on. 

You will get a form sent to you automatically in the month before you reach State Pension age, provided HMRC has  your date of birth on record. If you’re within a month of reaching State Pension age and haven’t received a P161 form you can download a copy from http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/p161-man.pdf or ask us to do this for you.

HMRC will also re-send the form to women as they approach their 65th birthday. They do this so that they can check your income to see whether you qualify for the higher age-related personal allowance which is based on income.

You can download HMRC’s leaflet ‘Approaching retirement, a guide to tax and National Insurance contributions’ from http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/leaflets/ir121.pdf or ask us to do to this for you.

If you want more information visit HMRC’s website at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pensioners/