As Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US, famously said: “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” When it comes to the realm of pension saving in the UK this is certainly true.
As we enter the new tax year we also enter a new era for pensions as I don’t think anyone, outside of government, saw the abolishment of the Lifetime Allowance (LTA) coming.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has been spending a lot of time recently looking at pensions. Before Christmas we had a paper on the tax treatment of pensions on death, and now they have followed this up with their blueprint for a better tax treatment of pensions.
Shortly before Christmas the IFS released its report 'Death and taxes and pensions', with the headline view that taxation of pensions on death was far too generous.
Back in its Financial Advice Market Review of 2016, the FCA recommended the Treasury should challenge the industry to make a Pensions Dashboard available to consumers by 2019. Even then the concept of a dashboard wasn’t new – the recommendation was made due to the limited progress that had been made to date.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen several announcements of big changes to income tax.
As the saying goes, nothing is certain except death and taxes. When you put the two together you get inheritance tax (IHT) and in my experience of the pension world the subject of IHT is also certain to come up on a regular basis – I’ve had two queries on the subject in the last two days.
When George Osborne dropped his Pension Freedom bombshell in his now infamous 2014 budget I was on maternity leave.
It’s been eight months since the DWP made changes to the statutory right to transfer. Over that time the number of transfers being held up by the new anti-scam measures appears to have steadily increased.
Whether or not an attorney can appoint a discretionary investment manager is a question that has come up a number of times over the last couple of months. The position on this has changed following updated guidance from the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), so maybe it is no wonder confusion still abounds.