Retirement Annuity Relief check letter

GOV.UK says HMRC may write to you or your authorised agent to ask you to check that you have claimed Retirement Annuity Relief correctly, because it can sometimes be mistaken for other types of pension contributions. It says HMRC may write from 14 September 2026 up to and including 28 September 2026. GOV.UK says the letter will ask you to check your Self Assessment tax returns, and whether you made personal contributions to a Retirement Annuity Contract in the 2024 to 2025 tax year. It says your letter may include a Retirement Annuity Relief claim figure, but not all letters will. [2]

HMRC's manual says a One to Many approach sets out what HMRC wants customers to do and why, what happens if they do or do not respond, and what follow up HMRC will undertake. So the letter's own words are the best record of what HMRC is asking about, and why. [3]

HMRC's manual tells its staff that if a One to Many letter asks people for more information or records to show their tax affairs are correct, HMRC must either open a compliance check or make clear that, where information is asked for voluntarily, there is no obligation to provide it. [3]

What follows if nobody replies is for your letter itself to say. GOV.UK publishes what one campaign's letters say happens without a reply: for its 2026 letters to companies about Marginal Relief, HMRC says that if you do not respond, it may take further action, including opening a compliance check. For your letter, its own words are what count. [2]

What HMRC's own guidance says about disclosure and penalties: HMRC's factsheet CC/FS7a calls it an unprompted disclosure when you tell HMRC about an inaccuracy before you have any reason to believe it has discovered it, or is about to. Telling HMRC at any other time is a prompted disclosure. The same factsheet says the minimum penalty for an unprompted disclosure is lower than the minimum penalty for a prompted one. HMRC's guide to voluntary disclosure says any penalties it charges on outstanding tax will usually be lower if you tell HMRC about it yourself. [4] [5]

For an inaccuracy in a return you sent, HMRC's factsheet CC/FS7a gives the ranges: CC/FS7a gives the penalty range for a careless inaccuracy as 0% to 30% where the disclosure was unprompted, which means you told HMRC before you had any reason to believe it had found the inaccuracy or was about to. Where the disclosure was prompted, which means at any other time, CC/FS7a gives the range for a careless inaccuracy as 15% to 30%. The penalty is a percentage of what HMRC calls the potential lost revenue, the amount that arises from correcting the inaccuracy. GOV.UK: penalties for inaccuracies, CC/FS7a [4]

These are the routes GOV.UK describes. Which one fits depends on your own affairs, and this page does not say which.