Comment and Blogs
Small Self-Administered Schemes – SSASs – are the original self-invested pension. The first schemes written will be approaching the big 50 in the next couple of years. They have almost two decades on the new kid on the block that is SIPP.
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.
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.
When George Osborne dropped his Pension Freedom bombshell in his now infamous 2014 budget I was on maternity leave.
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.
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.