Recommendation 14

We also asked who benefited from pension tax reliefs, and the split between different types of pensions. HMRC told us that its aim was to be fully transparent with all the information that it held, and referred to the work that had been undertaken to support the government’s 2015 review of pension tax reliefs.23 In September 2019, HMRC published data on the cost of different pension tax reliefs between 2012–13 and 2017–18. HMRC’s data did not show which groups or sectors benefited from these reliefs, or how the reliefs were used by those working in the public and private sectors, or by those with defined contribution or defined benefit schemes.24