Guidance

Find the relief at source residency statuses of multiple members

Create a comma-separated values (CSV) file to search for the residency statuses of your pension scheme's members.

• From: HM Revenue & Customs
• Published: 29 May 2018
• Last updated: 24 April 2019 — See all updates

HMRC will send you a file of your members’ known residency statuses each year.

Some pension scheme members may not appear in the file, such as those who are new to the scheme. If a number of your members do not appear in the file HMRC send you, you can then check the residency status for relief at source of multiple members by uploading a CSV file.

You do not need to upload a CSV file if you want to check just one member’s residency status.

Add member details to the file

For each scheme member you want to check, you need to enter their:

• National Insurance number
• first name
• last name
• date of birth in the order year, month and day, separating them with a hyphen

You must enter each member’s details in the CSV file. Separate them with a comma (for example QQ123456D,John,Smith,1970-08-31)

There is no comma or any other punctuation after the date of birth.

You must not use any headings within the file, and you must enter each member you are searching for on a new line in the file.

Upload your file

You can only upload your file by using the look up service.

Before you upload, you should open the CSV in a text editor to make sure it is formatted properly. You cannot have any special characters such as “ * ( /.

When you upload your file, it can take up to 24 hours for the results to be added. You cannot upload another file during this time.

The maximum file size that can be uploaded to the service is 2MB, which is about 35,000 members. After your most recent file has been deleted from the look up service you can upload a CSV file of further members for checking.

While you can only have one CSV file uploaded and being checked at any time, there is no limit to the total number of files you can upload overall.

Your results

The residency status for each member will be added into the file and you can download it from the service.

This file will only be available for 3 calendar days before it is deleted.

The results will be:

• scotResident
• otherUKResident
• cannot provide status
• welshResident

If a residency status is not shown, you should check with your member to make sure their personal details are correct. If you have checked and everything is correct, the member must contact HMRC to update their personal details.

Published 29 May 2018
Last updated 24 April 2019 + show all updates

1. 24 April 2019

   The 'Your results' section has been updated to include 'welshResident' .

2. 29 May 2018

   First published.