Wife's Pension

jem16

margaretclare wrote: »

Where did I say I thought it was wrong?

Your posts give the impression that the OP is not thinking of his wife but merely himself and that you feel this is wrong. You may not mean this but it does come across that way.

Time will come when there's only one of us left, and that one will still have 100% of his/her own.

The OP's wife at that point would be able to claim a 100% state pension. We don't know what other provision his wife has.

margaretclare

You still don't understand, do you? I'll leave it as it is. It is something which is either so obvious as to need no expounding, or it is utterly incomprehensible.

mark55man

Leaving aside the detour into "gets it doesn't get it" I think you can do quite a lot if you consider the whole time period

* what you do now - pay in the £2800 amount which will be grossed up to £3600 by the govt independent of your income and your OH's lack of income. You lose out on tax relief now, but this will give your wife income later which won't be taxed at the higher rate so you will get some/most of it back later
* when you take a pension, you could take the lumpsum and transfer it to your OH into income generating investments in her name and using her income and capital gains allowances and her ISA allowances

I think though this is just the sort of situation in which you need a proper accountant/pension planner to tell you. It feels similar to my situation most (but by no means all) assets in my name, wife and family covered if (when) I pop it now or later, but not well balanced from a tax point of view

I think it depends how many years to retirement as well as to whether its meaningful to do this

MoneyGeoff

Thank you. I'll start paying the £2800 that you and jem have mentioned. An ISA in my wife's name is a good tip too, thanks.

As you say I won't get the tax relief that I get with the company penion, but the pension is going to get taxed at 40% at the other end anyway so the above 2 options seem preferable to increasing pension payments.