Doctors are still on a waiting list to see if they are owed rebates from tax paid on previous pension savings impacted by the ‘McCloud remedy’.

Every doctor impacted by McCloud should have received ‘remedial service statements’ by October 6 to show the recalculations of their pension growth and therefore their annual allowance positions across the seven years known as the ‘remedy period’.

But to the frustration of doctors and their advisers, many of the statements have not yet arrived and there have been significant errors among those that have been received and analysed.

“Since we first started talking about ‘McCloud’ several years ago, the issue has been plagued by complexity,” says Samuel Kirton, financial planner with specialist financial advisers Cavendish Medical.

“These statements should be putting people’s minds at rest that they can finally unravel the calculations of their pension savings and the tax owed over the last few years. Instead, many doctors are more confused than ever. They may be looking at incorrect figures or they have yet to receive any information at all.

Limited time

“To make matters worse, there is a limited time to input their figures into HM Revenue and Custom’s (HMRC’s) new online portal and then submit their self-assessment data as usual before the end of January.

“We would have expected the deadline for tax submissions to be extended, but this has yet to be confirmed.”

To recap, the ‘McCloud remedy’ aims to recompense NHS Pension Scheme members deemed to have suffered age discrimination when the 2015 pension scheme was introduced.

Those members now have the option to receive their original benefits from the 1995 or 2008 scheme for the ‘remedy period’ which runs from 2015 when the new pension scheme began to 2022.

Mr Kirton added: “Many members will find that their annual allowance position has been reduced over the years, which would lead to a rebate, plus interest, on any erroneous tax paid to HMRC. For others, the new figures could establish that tax has been underpaid on pension growth – and the treatment of this is not straightforward.

“We understand that this is an enormous undertaking for NHS Pensions but the fact remains that doctors, already facing challenging and important work, should not need to be chasing their information.”

He said if they contact NHS Pensions to request statements then they are being told there is no time-scale for when their data will be available.