Obtaining pension contributions information from Teachers Pensions UK
Jane Marks
Hello,
I'm hoping to obtain guidance on an effective way to obtain information on contributions my mother made to her UK Teachers Pension. Background details are below.
My mother worked from 1954 until 1991 and recently moved to live in Australia. She receives a pension from Teachers Pensions UK. I am now trying to help prepare her first Australian tax return and have learned that to minimise her Australian taxes I need to provide details of her contributions to the pension. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) refer to this as the Undeducted Purchase Price (UPP) and define it as "the amount you contribute towards the purchase price of your pension or annuity – your personal contributions.". A 2012 posting to britishpensions.org.au ("In addition to the 8% UPP on my UK age pension, I receive a UPP for my Teachers' Pension. I had to obtain my contribution record from the Teachers' Pension Agency (easily provided on request), and submit this to the ATO who calculated my UPP (in pounds sterling) I then have to find the average exchange rate for the year - fairly easily found at the ATO web-site, and calculate my UPP for the present year." ) plus a discussion forum I found on line suggested to me that I should be easily able to obtain this information from Teachers Pensions UK. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Twice via their online enquiry and once via telephone I have been advised that they do not keep contributions records and that I should try contacting previous employers which given my mother's dates of employment is impractical. Any guidance on how to obtain teachers pensions contributions successfully would be much appreciated.
Best regards,
Jane.
Paul Swain
I'm hoping to obtain guidance on an effective way to obtain information on contributions my mother made to her UK Teachers Pension. Background details are below.
Hi Jane!
I don't have any specific advice, but if all else fails, asking Teachers Pensions UK for your mother's data under the Data Protection Act should at least get you all the information that they hold. There's information about using the Data Protection Act at https://www.gov.uk/data-protection
Also, UPP has been discussed a little before (see https://groups.google.com/g/bapanews/search?q=upp),
though I don't think that any of the discussion covers private
pensions.
But hopefully someone has some specific information.
Paul