Budget

Linton

ColdIron wrote: »

If I put £1,000 of money I earned into my pension which bit of that is not mine?

Strictly speaking - none of it is "yours". The money is held in trust for you to finance your retirement.

ColdIron

Linton wrote: »

Strictly speaking - none of it is "yours". The money is held in trust for you to finance your retirement.

To a degree that was true before the recent changes (apart from the tax free 25%) but now a pension has become little more than a very tax efficient savings plan with some restrictions regarding when you can access it. However it was always true, and I wasn't aware of this until recently, that you could take the whole value as cash albeit with some very punitive tax penalties, something that still remains

Linton

ColdIron wrote: »

To a degree that was true before the recent changes (apart from the tax free 25%) but now a pension has become little more than a very tax efficient savings plan with some restrictions regarding when you can access it. However it was always true, and I wasn't aware of this until recently, that you could take the whole value as cash albeit with some very punitive tax penalties, something that still remains

If a pension is just a tax efficient savings plan I find it difficult to see any justification for it at all. Why have two schemes, ISAs and pensions, doing the same thing?

kidmugsy

Linton wrote: »

If a pension is just a tax efficient savings plan I find it difficult to see any justification for it at all.

Getting the employer contribution tax-free?

If there were the slightest chance of someone who had failed to save for old age, or who had saved but then splurged the lot, being told "Hard cheese, fend for yourself" then there would be a case for no constraints, and no tax breaks for saving. But surely we all know that such people will always be granted a dole by the taxpayer. Don't we? Isn't that the root of the problem?