With deadlines approaching for annual pension certificates and Estimates of Pensionable Profits, here’s what practice managers and GPs need to know and what they need to do.
2022/23 Annual Certificate of Pensionable Profits (Type 1)
All GP and non-GP provider partners within a practice holding a GMS, PMS or APMS contract must submit a Type 1 Pension Certificate annually.
The Type 1 Pension certificate submission deadline is 28th February each year. However, NHS Pensions have confirmed the deadline date for submission this year has been extended to 31st March 2024 due to the complexities of the calculation of the correct splits of pensionable pay and tier rates as a result of the mid-year tier rate change on 1 October 2022.
Information for GP and non-GP Provider Partners
All GPs should provide their practice manager and/or accountant with the pension contributions figures that they have paid towards their pension relating to the 2022/23 pension year. This is the GP’s own responsibility and cannot be undertaken by the practice manager.
The preparer of the Type 1 certificate will need to know the GP’s total employer, employee and AVC contribution figures for the year the certificate relates to.
To find out these figures, GPs should log in to their PCSE Portal page (username is likely to be your email address, usually the same one linked to your GMC account), select GP Pension and Payments, then select the GPP Pensions tab and click the Employee Contribution Statement option. From this page the GP will be able to see the pension contributions that they have made in respect of the 2022/23 pension year (or any given pension year). A screenshot, print-out or total figure should be taken and provided to the preparer of the certificate.
The 2022/23 certificate will only be processed by PCSE if all previous years’ records are up to date. For information on how to check if your pension record is complete, please see the guidance later in this article.
Information for Practice Managers
Where a shortfall payment is due and the GP wishes to receive tax relief on the payment at the earliest possible date, we recommend a BACS payment is made prior to submission of the certificate.
PCSE request that an End Of Year Payment Template form is completed and submitted alongside each certificate via the ‘Contact us’ page where a BACS payment has been made.
Practice managers should encourage their GPs to retrieve the information mentioned above from the Employee Contribution Statements and provide this to the preparer of their certificate.
2022/23 Medical Practitioners Self-Assessment Form (Type 2)
All GPs who were employed on a salaried basis or were a long term sessional GP within a practice holding a GMS, PMS or APMS contract or were working under a PCN contract must submit a Type 2 Form annually.
The 2022/23 Type 2 Form submission deadline is 28th February each year. However, NHS Pensions have confirmed the deadline date for submission this year has also been extended to 31st March 2024.
Information for Salaried GPs
Salaried GPs are required to complete the Type 2 Medical Practitioners self- assessment form for all years in which they worked as a salaried GP. This is the only way that your pension record is updated.
Completing the form involves entering your pensionable pay for the year and the employee and added years/AVC pension contributions that have been collected through the payroll. You should take this information from your payslips. It is essentially the gross pay on which pension contributions have been paid and will include your normal gross pay, including overtime, and any ad hoc income net of expenses. This is not to be confused with the taxable pay which would show on a P60.
The form also has to include any other Practitioner earnings e.g. pensioned GP locum work, GP SOLO work for Appraisals/out of hours, other salaried GP posts and type 1 earnings if you were also a GP partner during the year. Any periods of maternity leave also need to be considered as do the rules for annualising which are explained in the notes on the website.
If you are unsure of what information needs to be input, we are happy to have a discussion with you about how we can assist with completing this form on your behalf.
The 2022/23 form will only be processed by PCSE if all previous years’ records are up to date. For information on how to check if your pension record is complete, please see the guidance at the later in this article.
Information for Practice Managers
The practice manager will need to reconcile the employee contributions with amounts due per the type 2 form; amounts already collected through payroll and the original amounts collected by PCSE through the practice contract statements. This three-way calculation is not always straight forward and if MHA have prepared the Type 2 certificate then we will be happy to assist with this step also.
2024/25 Estimate of NHS Pensionable Profits/Pay (EOPP)
All practices holding a GMS, PMS or APMS contract must submit an EOPP annually in advance of the NHS Pension year, which begins in April of each year.
The 2024/25 Estimate of Pensionable Profit deadline is 1st March 2024 if submitting by post or 31 March 2024 if submitting via PCSE online. Failure to submit this form by the due date might result in the GPs and non-GP Providers paying contributions at the 13.5% maximum tiered rate regardless of their income.
If a GP (excluding a freelance GP locum) or non-GP Provider joins or leaves the practice after this form has been submitted, then the practice must submit an additional revised form during the year.
Information for GPs (partners and salaried) and non-GP provider partners
To assist the practice manager in completing the form on your behalf, the practice manager should be provided with details of any other practitioner earnings you expect to earn outside of the practice in the 2024/25 year. Examples of these other earnings would be GP SOLO work, pensioned locum work and other type 2 salaried GP earnings.
This information is needed to set the correct contribution tier and ensure your pension deductions are as accurate as possible and will reduce the level of adjustment within the shortfall payment or refund that is required once the annual certificates are processed.
Information for Practice Managers
For practices for whom MHA prepare the EOPP on your behalf, we will request the relevant information from you in advance of preparing the form. It is important that you respond to this request so that the information we provide to you for submission to PCSE is as accurate as possible. This should help to reduce the level of adjustment within the shortfall payment or refund that is required once the annual certificates are processed. The practice manager or lead partner must submit the EOPP prior to the deadlines as given above.
Updated guidance on how to submit using PCSE Online form will be issued by MHA to all client practice managers in due course once the 2024/25 form becomes available.
It is recommended that the Performers List for the practice has been updated to include all individuals who will show on this form, prior to submission via the PCSE Portal.
The portal has the option to provide access to the Estimates section for your practice accountant. This ‘Estimates’ role will allow us to access this area and confirm that the individuals named above (GP and non-GP partners, Salaried GPs) are currently connected properly to the practice through its performer list, and to pre-empt any issues if any need adding to the list in advance of the submission of this form.”
Other matters
Check previous years’ Type 1 and Type 2 certificates record is up to date
It must be noted that certificates will only be processed by PCSE in sequential order - i.e., if 2021/22 has not yet been submitted, PCSE might not process 2022/23 and so on. You can therefore now check via the new PCSE Portal which years have been submitted – any that do not show are outstanding. PCSE may be showing some years as outstanding even when the forms were submitted correctly by the due date. This is because PCSE may not have correctly processed the forms or they have been lost or voided in their systems.
To check if you have any years outstanding or unprocessed by PCSE, log-in to the PCSE Portal, select the GP Pensions tab, click the Annual Certificate option from the dashboard and look under the Financial Year section. You will see which years are missing or incomplete as these will be shown in red.
