Have Pension….Will Travel

Originally published in the Guernsey Wealth Management Supplement from Taxation Magazine, June 2010

Alison Vine, Tax Director at Ernst & Young in Guernsey, explains the advantages of establishing or transferring your pension abroad if you are not staying in the UK.

The top rate of income tax in the UK is 50%, contributions into UK pension schemes are qualifying for less and less relief, and the fiscal position of the UK is worrying. Now is the perfect time for someone who has:

• accumulated a pension pot in the UK but is about to leave;
• no longer lives there, or
• is in the UK for some temporary purpose only, to consider whether placing the pension outside the UK would make more sense.