Guidance

Appendix 1 – notification of residency status report technical information – January 2019

Published 17 January 2019

The purpose of this appendix is to describe the standard format in which scheme administrators will receive their notification of residency status report in January each year.

HMRC is required to provide a residency status for relief at source scheme members and will use the data submitted on the previous year’s annual return of information to tell you the correct relief at source rates to apply to your scheme members in the following tax year. We will provide a residency status for all members we are able to trace.

1. Explanation of additional fields

HMRC will replay the information on the annual return of information in the same order and sequence that was submitted but with additional information. This will be two additional columns, Residency Status and Corrected National Insurance number.

Where HMRC identifies that the National Insurance number was incorrect or omitted, we will provide the correct National Insurance number, along with the original National Insurance number to enable scheme administrators to match the individual scheme member back to their dataset. We will only do this if we can match or trace the individual on HMRC systems based on the information provided.

Where HMRC is unable to identify the individual scheme member, the letter ‘U’ will be added to the residency status field to indicate we are unable to trace the individual and scheme administrators will have to operate the rest of the UK status.

Where the scheme administrators have received updated information for an untraced ‘U’ member they can use the look up residency status for relief at source service to check for a status.

Scheme administrators should ensure the annual return of information is corrected for the next submission with any updated member information. HMRC may be in touch to discuss the unmatched individuals.

2. Physical data

2.1 General

The file will contain variable length field ‘Delimited’ records in ASCII format. The field delimiter used is: ‘|’. Attributes in each record will conform to the following standards:

• text fields will be left justified with trailing space removed
• numeric date fields will be DDMMYYYY
• where a field has no value it will appear as ‘||’

2.2 Report layout

The filename used for each Notification of Residency Status Report will be constructed as follows: OE-NNNNNN.R_PNNNN_NN_YYYY.txt.

Where:

• ‘OE-NNNNNN’ is the unique HMRC reference for the electronic transfer, the numbers will increase so additional digits should be accepted
• ‘PNNNN_NN’ is the unique HMRC scheme administrator reference
• ‘YYYY’ is the 4 digit tax year number

An example of how a Notification of Residency Status Report name will look like is: OE-000000.R_P0000_01_2018.txt.

3. Data format

3.1 Record layout

Column	Attribute name	Mandatory (M) Optional (O) Conditiional (C)	Format	Comment
1	HMRC Scheme Administrator Ref	M	Text (8)	Allocated by HMRC (format = PNNNN/NN)
2	Scheme/ Administrator Name	M	Text (50)	If more than one scheme = administrator name. Single scheme = scheme name.
3	Tax Year	M	Number (4)	The year in which the period of the return ends (for example year ending 5 April 2018 = 2018).
4	Pension Scheme Reference (PSTR)	M	Text (19)	The reference issued by HMRC on registration of a scheme. This will always be 10 characters, the format is 8 numeric digits followed by ‘R’ and another alpha character.
5	Member Title	M	Text (10)	Title component (for example Mr, Mrs, Doctor)
6	Member Forename(s)	M	Text (50)	Members Forename(s)
7	Member Surname	M	Text (50)	Members Surname
8	Member National Insurance	C	Text (9)	National Insurance number of member
9	Property Name or Property Number & Street	M	Text (40)	Member address (Line 1)
10	Address Line 2	M	Text (40)	Member address (Line 2)
11	Address Line 3	C	Text (40)	Member address (Line 3)
12	Address Line 4	C	Text (40)	Member address (Line 4)
13	Address Line 5	C	Text (40)	Member address (Line 5)
14	Member Postcode	C	Text (8)	Member address (Postcode)
15	Member DOB	M	Date (8)	Member Date of Birth (format = DDMMYYYY)
16	Member Gender	M	Text (1)	Male = M Female = F
17	Status	M	Text (1)	Employment Status (Values 1-9)
18	Individual Contribution	M	Text (6)	Total amount of individual contribution, rounded to the nearest pound.
19	Employer Contribution	M	Text (6)	Total amount of monies, assets and investments held for the member on a particular date, rounded to the nearest pound.
20	Term Assurance	M	Text (6)	Total amount of transfer payment received, rounded to the nearest pound.
21	Total Amount of Transfer Payment Received	M	Text (8)	Total amount of monies received in the tax year from the National Insurance contributions office, rounded to the nearest pound.
22	Total National Insurance Rebates	M	Text (6)	Total amount of monies received in the tax year from the National Insurance contributions office, rounded to the nearest pound.
23	Value of Members Fund	M	Text (8)	Total amount of monies, assets and investments held for the member on a particular date, rounded to the nearest pound.
24	Date of Fund Valuation	M	Date (8)	The date used to value the members fund (format = DDMMYYYY)
25	Residency Status	O	Text (1)	S – The individual has a Scottish residence. C – The individual has a Welsh residence. U - The individual has not been traced. ‘Empty’ - the field will be left empty as the individual has a residence status in the rest of the UK Note IT developers can write this field as ‘NULL’.
26	Corrected National Insurance number	O	Text (9)	Corrected National Insurance number given where HMRC has identified the National Insurance number was incorrect or it was omitted and have been able to trace the correct National Insurance number. Format in alpha numeric AANNNNNNA. The ninth character could be an alpha character if present or left blank. Note IT developers may need to consider writing this ninth character to accept a ‘NULL’.

3.2 File examples

Member 1:

1. Has supplied a HMRC Scheme Administrator Reference
2. Has supplied a Pension Scheme Reference (PSTR) is 10 character (issued on registration of Scheme)
3. Has supplied a National Insurance number
4. Has included all address lines
5. Residency Status ‘S’
6. Corrected National Insurance number not entered

Member 2:

1. Has supplied a HMRC Scheme Administrator Reference
2. Has supplied a Pension Scheme Reference (PSTR) is 10 character (issued on registration of Scheme)
3. Not supplied a National Insurance number
4. Only supplied Mandatory Address Lines (Property Name or Property Number and street, Address Line 2) and postcode
5. Residency Status ‘blank’ (that is has a residence status in the rest of the UK)
6. Corrected National Insurance number entered (Set to Matched National Insurance number as no supplied National Insurance number)

Member 3:

1. Has supplied a HMRC Scheme Administrator Reference
2. Pension Scheme Tax Reference (PSTR) is 10 character (issues on registration of Scheme)
3. Has supplied National Insurance number
4. Has included all address lines
5. Residency Tax Status ‘C’
6. Corrected National Insurance number not entered

Member	Content
1	P0000/01|PSCHEME|2018|00000000RA|DOCTOR|JANE|SMITH|QQ123456A|1 THE AVENUE|ALINE2|ALINE3|ALINE4|ALINE5|PC1 1PC| 01011950|F|1|0|0|100|0|0|0|06072017|S|
2	P0000/01|PSCHEME|2018|00000000RA|MR|JOHN|KING||1 THE COTTAGE|THE CITY||||AA11 1AA|25081995|M|3|999999|999999|999999| 99999999|0|99999999|01102017||QQ123456A
3	P0000/01|PSCHEME|2018|00000000RA|MRS|ANNE|ANDERSON|QQ123456A|LINE1|LINE2|LINE3|LINE4|LINE5|PC2 2PC| 02021966|F|9|0|0|200|0|0|0|02082017|C|

4. Contact

If you have any issues, queries or feedback about this document, email: pensions.businessdelivery@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and put ‘RAS Technical Specification - Query’ in the subject of the email.