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Seeking comment: Why are women more likely to miss out on pension tax relief?

Journalist: Aaliyah Ahmed, The Times

ended 08. September 2026

I am looking for expert commentary on HMRC’s plans to write to around 1.32 million people who may be entitled to a pension top-up of around £70 after missing out on tax relief.

Around 75% of those eligible are expected to be women - roughly 990,000 people. Why are women so disproportionately affected? Is this linked to lower earnings, part-time work or career breaks?

I’d also be interested in whether people might mistake the letters for scams and miss out on the payment.

Comment on why women are particularly affected, the wider impact on low earners and whether the government is doing enough would be really useful!

2 responses from the Newspage community

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Anita WrightVerified
Chartered Financial Planner at Ribble Wealth Management
This is less a story about women than about low pay and a badly designed tax rule. Anyone earning under £12,570 in a net pay pension scheme has quietly missed the 20% top up that colleagues in other schemes get automatically. Women are three quarters of those affected because they are most of the part time, low paid workforce. Shrink the pay gap and this pension gap shrinks with it. Label it a women's problem and you overlook the 330,000 men caught too, and the real culprit is a system that penalised its smallest savers for years before correcting itself. £70 sounds trivial, but it is relief that was owed all along, at a time when inflation is already eating into savings. Letters from HMRC offering money will look like scams to many, so plenty will bin them. Is government doing enough? Automatic relief across all schemes would have avoided this entirely. Writing to 1.3 million people is not the same as fixing the problem
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Jess Best
Independent Financial Planner at McLaren Capital
Women are so disproportionately affected, missing out on tax relief, because they're more likely to have time out of work, whether that's stopping completely or choosing to go part-time, due to caring responsibilities, resulting in much lower pension contribution levels.
Raising children or caring for elderly parents, requires time out of work with subsequent lower earnings and lower workplace pension contributions which could be matched by their employer. It also means women miss the opportunity for promotions which their male counterparts might receive which in turn increase pension contributions and subsequent tax relief.
The gender pension gap is engrained into our societal norms and women will always be less well off for as long as they can have children and the subsequent career breaks this entails. Shared parental leave is certainly a step towards tackling this.