Declaring savings

rogerblack

Coraline wrote: »

From my experience it's up to the council/dwp whether they decide it's capital. When I moved here I had roughly £40,000 in a private pension. I could access it at any time, but would face enormous tax penalties and lose about 25% of it by withdrawing.

I explained the situation to the council (at the time my partner was receiving housing benefit) and they said they wouldn't count it because of the penalties and taxes from withdrawing early from the retirement fund would be severe.

As I understand it, this is partially discretionary.
If you have assets worth 64K, and can only sell them for 16K, then you still may be assessed as having 16K.
It depends on the assessor - I'm not aware of any national guidance on this.

Coraline

rogerblack wrote: »

As I understand it, this is partially discretionary.
If you have assets worth 64K, and can only sell them for 16K, then you still may be assessed as having 16K.
It depends on the assessor - I'm not aware of any national guidance on this.

That's what we found out after we paid a solicitor (CAB was useless, couldn't find any information online, forums were well, not good for this type of advice anyway).

Either way we sent the council all the paperwork along the way and it's all on record with our declarations and such.

Ironic that I wound up cashing out that damn pension expecting to be unemployed for a long time, only to land a well-paid job a month later that would have taken us off all benefits entirely anyway! LOL. Sometimes you just have laugh...

[Deleted User]

more i think about it the more im sure that if you take the 25% tax free lump sum from your pension fund then you are assumed to be receiving a pension from the remaining 75% for benefit purposes