Draft Finance Bill To Be Published On 11 December 2012

In December the Government will publish copies of draft legislation to be included in the Finance Bill 2013, along with draft explanatory notes, tax information and impact notes for the legislative measures. The draft clauses will be open for consultation until 6 February 2013, and many of them will affect pensions. The key points to note from the March 2012 Budget Report are:

• HMRC will be given a regulation making power so that it can amend the fixed protection rules to prevent members inadvertently losing fixed protection in certain circumstances. One concern has been that, where trustees provide discretionary increases in excess of (i) those set out under their rules and (ii) the HMRC threshold of 5%, then HMRC will regard this as an increase determined by the trustees. This fixed protection may result in a loss of fixed protection.