claiming uk and army pension in australia

leeb51

can anyone help me? i am a brit living in australia (citizen) and want to know how to claim my uk and army pension when the time comes. i was in the army for 5 years,someone told me that was the minimum time you needed to serve for a pension (served from 1997 - 2002). do i need to transfer the pensions over to australia or will a payment be paid to me every week?

Debt_Free_Chick

Both can be paid to you in Oz, but the payments will be in GBP£ and you'll probably have to bear the cost of converting them to Oz$.

Also, your State Pension will not increase - it will simply be paid at the same rate, from day one.

Some basic information here

EdInvestor

Being Government payments, both these pensions will be subject to Uk tax (after tax free personal allowance, which will be 10k pa. for over 65s soon. )It may be worth your while checking how the tax situation will work in Oz - can you avoid paying any further tax locally?

BTW UK state pension back years can be purchased by expats @only around 10 pounds a month (class 2 contributions). This can be a bargain even with the lack of indexation, worthing considering for Aussies, as there is no real local state pension, just a means-tested benefit which many don't get.