£2,500 A MONTH – THE NEW BASE LINE?

The Government seem to believe that most people can survive on £2,500 a month (taxable), that’s £30,000 a year. In practice excluding national insurance, that would be a net income of roughly £26,500 with basic rate tax paid of £3,500. I have also excluded any pension payments or charitable giving. You will recall that there is a personal allowance of £12,500 (0% income tax) for those with income below £100,000.

By way of simply showing how an adviser can achieve this level of income for you (tax free) here are some options. Doing them all would far exceed the target £26,500 income, but hopefully you will see my point.

• If aged 55 but not yet drawing a State Pension. You could crystallise £16,665 of an investment-based pension. This would generate £4,166.25 as tax free cash and £12,498.75 as taxable income, but as it is within the £12,500 threshold there would be no income tax to pay. However you would then find yourself restricted to a maximum £4000pa of new contributions to pensions (called the Money Purchase Annual Allowance or MPAA).
• Alternatively, you could simply crystallise £106,000 of an investment based pension, take 25% (£26,500) as tax free cash and leave the balance to grow.
• An investment portfolio will regularly have gains (that’s the point after all). A growth of say 5% over a year on a fund of £234,000 can use £12,300 of the capital gains tax allowance – 0% tax. Trigger a larger gain and the gains above £12,300 are taxed at a lower rate of 10% or maybe 20% (but not if you do these other things).
• Perhaps rent a room for a tax free £7,500 a year
• Draw 5% of your capital back from an investment bond, so a Bond of £100,000 would provide £5,000
• Any money drawn from ISAs would be tax free, but taking say £8,535 from an ISA would take the total “income” from all these to £50,000 and not a penny of income tax would be paid.

EARNED INCOME IS TAXED MORE

Yet if this was earned income in 2020/21 income tax of £7,498.20 would be due with a further £4,860 of National Insurance a total of £12,358.20 leaving a net income of £37,641.80. This is makes full use of the basic rate tax, any income above this would be taxed at 40% or 45%.

The point I am making is that how much tax is paid is very much dependent on where your money is and how it is generated. It’s certainly the case that not everyone has these sums of money (which are likely to have been taxed before). However, this is only the basic stuff and exposes the problem of a complex tax system that punishes those earning income far more than those with capital.

IF YOU ARE NOT A CLIENT

If you are reading this and not a client, do not conclude that the above is advice to you, it is not. The calculations that we do can be complex and relate to each individual situation, never rely on generic information about money, except for spend less than you earn.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk