McCloud Remedy: Your Dentist Tax Return Explained

A brown envelope from the NHS Business Services Authority lands on your desk. Inside is a Remediable Pension Savings Statement, or RPSS, full of pension growth figures for years you thought you'd long finished with. If you're a dentist wondering whether this affects your tax return, and what on earth you're meant to do with it, you're in the right place.

This guide explains, in plain English, what the McCloud remedy is, why your annual allowance figures have changed for the remedy years, and the exact route HMRC wants you to use to put your tax right. We'll cover the deadlines, walk through an illustrative example, and flag the points where dentists most often trip up.

It's written for NHS and mixed NHS-private dentists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who are members of the NHS Pension Scheme. If you're salaried, an associate, or a practice owner with a Scheme membership through the remedy period, this is for you.

What is the McCloud remedy in one sentence?

The McCloud remedy reverses age discrimination in public service pensions by rolling your NHS pension service for 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 back into your legacy 1995/2008 Scheme, which can change the annual allowance figures on which you may already have paid tax.

That single change is what triggers the RPSS, and it's why HMRC has built a separate service to correct your tax position for those years.

Why did I get a Remediable Pension Savings Statement?

In a 2018 case known as McCloud, the courts found that the way the 2015 public service pension reforms protected older members was age discrimination. The fix, the "remedy", applies across NHS, teachers, civil service and other public schemes.

For the NHS, the remedy works in two stages. The first stage is rollback. From 1 October 2023, any pensionable service you built up during the remedy period, 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022, is treated as if it was always in your legacy scheme. For dentists that legacy scheme is the 1995/2008 Scheme.

You're affected if you were a member of the NHS Pension Scheme on or before 31 March 2012 and were still in pensionable service on 1 April 2015. Later, at retirement, you get a second choice (a "deferred choice") about which scheme's benefits to take for those years.

Because rollback recalculates how much your pension grew in each remedy year, your "pension input amount" for the annual allowance test changes too. The RPSS is the statement that sets out those revised figures. It shows your pension growth for the remedy years and the 2022/23 tax year, plus earlier years for carry forward, so you can see whether your annual allowance position has moved.

The NHSBSA has said the majority of statements have already been issued, with any outstanding ones produced as a priority. If you retired or took benefits before 1 October 2023, you'll generally get your RPSS only after you've been contacted to make your benefit choice for the remedy period.

How does rollback change my annual allowance?

The annual allowance is the most you can save into pensions each year with tax relief before a tax charge can apply. For 2025/26 the standard annual allowance is £60,000, and you can carry forward unused allowance from the previous three tax years.

If you're a high earner, your allowance can be tapered. For 2025/26 the taper bites once your adjusted income goes over £260,000 (and only if your threshold income is over £200,000). For every £2 of adjusted income above £260,000, your annual allowance drops by £1, down to a minimum of £10,000.

Here's the key point for the remedy. Your NHS pension growth (your pension input amount) for each remedy year is being recalculated on a 1995/2008 basis. For many dentists that growth figure goes down, because the 2015 scheme's career-average build-up was often higher in the years it applied. A lower pension input amount can mean:

• An annual allowance charge you paid for a remedy year was too high, so you may be due money back.
• Less unused allowance to carry forward, which can change later years.

For some dentists the figure goes up instead, which can create a new or larger charge. The RPSS is what tells you which way it has moved, year by year. A useful side note for self-employed dentists: under HMRC's BIM54020, both the "employee" and "employer" elements of NHS superannuation you pay are relievable as member contributions for income tax, and they're disregarded when working out the annual allowance position.

Do I put the McCloud figures on my Self Assessment return?

No. This is the single biggest point of confusion, so it's worth saying plainly.

HMRC is explicit that changes to your tax charges arising from the remedy must not go on your Self Assessment return. Their guidance states that all changes to tax charges as a result of the public service pensions remedy must be submitted through the Calculate your public service pension adjustment service, and not through your Self Assessment tax return.

So if your tax adviser or accountant normally reports an annual allowance charge in the pension savings boxes of your return, the remedy-year corrections sit outside that. They go through the dedicated HMRC digital service instead. Your current-year (2025/26) annual allowance reporting still happens through your normal return as usual.

How do I claim a refund or compensation?

HMRC's online tool, "Calculate your public service pension adjustment", is the route for everything remedy-related. With your RPSS in hand, it works out your revised position for each remedy year and tells HMRC what to do.

The mechanism splits by tax year:

• Refunds apply where a previously paid annual allowance charge has gone down for the 2019/20 to 2021/22 tax years. If you paid HMRC directly, HMRC refunds you. If your pension scheme paid the charge under Scheme Pays, the scheme is told to increase your benefits instead.
• Compensation applies for the earlier 2015/16 to 2018/19 tax years, where the rules don't allow a direct tax refund. Compensation is paid via your pension scheme.

The service can also calculate a new or increased charge where rollback pushes your figures up. You complete it once for all your remedy years, and you can save your progress as you go.

Because the figures interact (a change in one year can ripple into carry forward in the next), this is a place where getting a professional to review the RPSS and run the calculation pays off. Our tax advisory team does this for dentists regularly.

What are the McCloud deadlines for dentists?

Timing matters, and the dates depend on your circumstances. The table below sets out the headline deadlines from HMRC and NHS guidance. Always check your own RPSS, as it may state dates specific to you.

Two things to note. First, the standard NHS Scheme Pays election deadline outside the remedy is 31 July following the Self Assessment deadline for the relevant year, so don't confuse the special remedy dates above with your ordinary annual deadline. Second, if you've missed a window because your statement arrived late, the NHSBSA and HMRC have processes for that, so don't assume the door is shut. Speak to an adviser before giving up on a refund.

Illustrative example: how the numbers can shift

Illustrative example. Maya is an NHS dentist who was a member of the Scheme before 2012. For the 2020/21 tax year, her original pension savings statement showed pension growth that, after using her carry forward, left her with an annual allowance charge. She paid £4,200 of that charge by writing a cheque to HMRC through her Self Assessment return at the time.

Her RPSS now recalculates her 2020/21 pension growth on the 1995/2008 basis. The revised growth is lower, so her annual allowance charge for that year falls. Using the "Calculate your public service pension adjustment" service, the recalculation shows her correct charge for 2020/21 should have been £2,700.

Because 2020/21 is a refund year (2019/20 to 2021/22), and Maya paid the original charge herself, HMRC refunds the difference directly to her:

£4,200 paid − £2,700 revised charge = £1,500 refund due.

If Maya had instead asked the NHS Pension Scheme to pay that original charge under Scheme Pays, the £1,500 would go to increasing her pension benefits rather than coming back as cash. And if the year in question had been 2017/18, it would be a compensation year (2015/16 to 2018/19), so any overpayment would be settled through the scheme, not as a direct HMRC refund.

These figures are illustrative only. Your own numbers depend entirely on your RPSS and your earnings history.

What about Scheme Pays and the SD86C certificate?

Scheme Pays lets the NHS Pension Scheme pay an annual allowance charge on your behalf in exchange for a reduction to your future pension. It's heavily used by dentists because pension growth can spike in a single year without any extra cash in your pocket to pay a tax bill.

For self-employed and practitioner dentists, your superannuable income, and therefore your pension growth, is confirmed through the SD86C superannuation certificate, which flows through the NHS Compass system after your Annual Reconciliation Report (typically around the end of July). That certificate underpins the figures used for your pension input amount, so it's worth checking it carefully each year.

When you're dealing with the remedy, the interaction between your RPSS, any Scheme Pays elections, and the HMRC adjustment service can get genuinely fiddly. If you want a second pair of eyes, our team that works with dentists handles NHS pension and tax interactions day in, day out.

Want help working through your Remediable Pension Savings Statement and the HMRC adjustment service? Book a call with a Zmartly accountant and we'll review your figures and handle the Self Assessment side end to end.

Frequently asked questions

Book a free Tax Health Check →