pension simplification Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

UK Pension rules are a post-modern farce

The state of the UK pension system, supposedly one of the best in the world, is a shambles. It is high time this Government got its act together and decided that either we should all be saving and encourage us to do so, or give up. The bureaucrats at Whitehall are the only winners in the pensions mess, with endless tinkering with the rules that are gradually constricting the life out of a system that is supposed to encourage and reward savers and employers alike.

You may recall that the last Government decided to draw a line under pension rules and adopt a new approach called “pensions simplification”. Well intended it may have been, but it has been a shambles. The current administration are just as bad. Pension simplification was meant to give everyone a maximum pension fund allowance (the lifetime allowance). Not easy when you consider that a lot of pensions are not real money – a final salary scheme, such as the NHS or Civil Service are not investment based pensions, but service based. Irrespective of what the employee contributes the end result is assured based upon a proportion of final salary. For the record, this has also been messed around with. Anyhow, these schemes were given a formula. Let’s keep it simple and suppose you have built a pension of £25,000 a year and the lump sum would be 3x times this amount. The formula was 2ox pension + LS. in other words £575,000 in this instance. Then this needs to be checked against the lifetime allowance, originally £1.5m – so in this case fine. The problem comes if your pension is worth £65,000 a year – which is not unreasonable in 2013 for a Consultant with 40 years of NHS service. Those with more than £1.5m at A-Day (when the new rules came in on 6 April 2006) could protect their existing funds by applying for enhanced or primary protection, essentially agreeing not to pay more in.

The Lifetime allowance has been increased and then decreased and heading to £1.25m from 6 April 2014. The amount that you can contribute has also been restricted. Severe tax penalties apply for anything over the limit. In essence there is an incentive to restrict growth and payments. Don’t forget that “the other side” of retirement, when you actually take your pension, this is taxable income. Argh! yes there are new levels of protection too, just to meet the problems of a reducing lifetime allowance and the latest raft of rules published by HMRC are out for consultation until 2nd September. These outline two more forms of protection Individual Protection (IP14) and Fixed Protection 2014 (FP14).

All of this needs very careful advice. But just in case anyone from central or any far off field of Government is bothering to listen. Here’s a question for you. Can YOU tell me what your pension is worth today? (all of them) and can you tell me what it will be worth when you retire? can you even tell me who your pensions are with? and are you aware of the potential problems for those with “workplace pension” or “auto enrolment” for those with large pension pots? No, like most people, you attempt to understand the mass of paper that may or may not arrive each year outlining the income that you might get if XYZ does something useful with your money.

If anyone in Government had a modicum of common sense the only restriction on a pension should be the amount that can be paid in that qualifies for tax relief. That is all. Have this as a fixed percentage of income – just one level, not dozens based on your age. Make it attractive. Don’t mess with it, leave it alone. YOU will get your tax relief back anyway in the form of income tax, reduced reliance upon the state and eventually in some cases inheritance tax. Here’s my suggestion after 20+ years of dealing with pensions and handling everything from the very basic questions to the most complex. Offer tax relief of 25% at source, with no need to reclaim it. Only allow those that pay income tax to receive the tax relief and restrict the amount to 25% of taxable income (in total from employer and employee). Oh, and keep the ability to have tax free cash of 25% of the fund at retirement, but no more. It bet that in 2 days you will still be able to remember my suggested fantasy rules. As for the more complex issues – allow carry back to only the last tax year and for non earners, or non taxpayers frankly there are likely to be more pressing matters for their money and a myriad of alternative forms of saving vehicles.

I wait in anticipation of the revolution that puts investors/savers/ the UK public first…. no I am not a member of UKIP.

Dominic Thomas – Solomons IFA

Auto enrolment – fools rush in?

If you are not drawing your State pension, then by now you should have picked up that pensions are changing – again! This time rather than making employers set up a pension that nobody might use, they have decided to force employers to set up a pension that everyone in that firm will use (unless they have an exemption or opt out). This will include mandatory contributions, which will be 3% from the employer and 5% from the employee (eventually). Whilst the employee can opt, he or she will be opted back in after 3 years (with the option to opt out again) – the ideal being that eventually you will forget and naturally begin building up a pension. Auto-enrolment is the path of least resistance.

Employers have begun (well some months ago) asking about AE. To say that there have been teething problems for the first of the large schemes would be an understatement. So today Steve Webb has intimated that SMEs will have a more simplified approach – now please note that AE is already meant to be a “no brainer” with no question asked other that “do you want in or out?”. I am left perplexed at what other new idea could be so simple… perhaps reforming NI and collecting payments directly would be sensible? I suspect that such “radical thinking” would be rather unwelcome. Anyhow when any Government uses terms like “simplified” or “simplistic” my cynicism really kicks in, as invariably this is code for “we have no idea of the consequences” but someone at a think tank thought this would work.

I am attending another presentation on AE next week, I am hoping that this will provide better insight into the latest “alteration”. I freely confess that it is better to change and adapt based upon experience, but for once, it would be nice to have some firm guidelines so that we all know where we stand..