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Comment and Blogs

2018 has been a quiet year in the world of pensions - no seismic changes or hacking of allowances makes for welcome relief.

It’s the time of year when all good advisers will be talking to their clients about making the most of any unused allowances, and this will often include using the annual allowance (AA) for pension contributions. But are there times when the advice should actually be NOT to use it?

Automatic enrolment (AE) has, by and large, been a success story. Opt outs have been fewer than predicted and the 10 millionth employee has been auto-enrolled, according to figures recently released by The Pensions Regulator (TPR). It’s also been good to see TPR getting their teeth into a few unscrupulous employers that have flouted the rules to show they mean business.

It has recently been announced that divorce laws will be changing.

It seems a long time since we had an annual allowance (AA) of £255,000. These days most pension savers are restricted to £40,000, but the money purchase annual allowance (MPAA) and the horribly complex tapered annual allowance (TAA) impose significant further restrictions for many. HMRC’s pension contribution statistics for 2016-17 tax year give us the first indication of the impact of the tapered annual allowance, and it’s not pretty.

Staveley will be a familiar name to many. The test case for IHT treatment of pensions following transfer in ill health has been in the news many times since Mrs Staveley’s passing all the way back in December 2006.

  1. Lisa Webster: Contribution refunds – what makes a genuine error?
  2. Elaine Turtle: Budget relief over pensions tax
  3. Elaine Turtle: 2019 – the year of the property
  4. Elaine Turtle: Retirement Outcomes Review

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