Is it too early for an Autumn Statement thread?

Triumph13

Okay I'll stick my guess in as well though I would expect them to wait until the budget to make any pension changes.

• Abolition of the LTA for anyone born after a certain date (whilst recognising that AA is much more sensible that LTA they won't want to let all the people currently hitting LTA who have benefitted from high AAs off the hook for a big tax bill)
• Reduction of the AA to say £25k pa but with carry forward increased to 5 years to allow for lumpy income patterns

robin61

I am really getting quite sick of wondering from one budget to the next what the next wheeze will be.
I would really like to see nothing happen at all. How about some stability for a change ?
Probably too much to ask.

Snakey

He did nothing to pensions last time, but then we have a different "he" at the wheel now and a lot of the groundwork has already been done and is lying there for the taking.

I would love it if they abolished the LTA, or at least raised it to a point where I wouldn't need to worry about it (i.e. more than £1m), but I can't think of a reason why they would do this right now sadly.

I wouldn't care if they restricted the AA as quid pro quo since I only need to put in £10-15k to sort me out... but I don't think they will restrict the AA because I think they did it as much as they could without shafting the public sector.

Keeping my fingers crossed that they won't remember that thing about raising the private pension access age, though. I'm still semi-sulking about it having been put up to 55 and that was years ago! Adding an extra 2-3 years on top of that would really put a spanner in my works. And it really grated on me that in the condoc they tried to make it sound as if we needed this arbitary blanket restriction to "make it easier for people to save enough to retire" (not actual quote) i.e. for our own good.

They did have some election promise about not raising headline tax rates, so they're a bit stuffed when it comes to overtly hammering us, which I think means (assuming they need to raise more money to fund Brexit) that we can expect all sorts of sneaky tricks - withdrawal or reduction of reliefs and so on. Maybe they'll aim a kick at Entrepreneurs' Relief, something like that, or whack employers NI on more things (employer pension contributions?).

The personal allowance clawback is one of those many things that I didn't care about when it didn't affect me (a year ago, thanks to pension contributions and recovering from a near-disaster with the career, I was barely hitting £50k and so £100k might as well have been on the moon) but now I'm staring it in the face it feels really harsh. 62%? Ouch! If I had been able to plan this in advance I probably would have chosen to take on less work in order to earn less money, which feels all wrong to me. It's funny, but I'd feel a lot better if the clawback were spread over a larger chunk of income, even if it meant I would be paying exactly the same overall. People are funny critters, aren't they?

ex-pat_scot

Snakey wrote: »

The personal allowance clawback is one of those many things that I didn't care about when it didn't affect me (a year ago, thanks to pension contributions and recovering from a near-disaster with the career, I was barely hitting £50k and so £100k might as well have been on the moon) but now I'm staring it in the face it feels really harsh. 62%? Ouch! If I had been able to plan this in advance I probably would have chosen to take on less work in order to earn less money, which feels all wrong to me. It's funny, but I'd feel a lot better if the clawback were spread over a larger chunk of income, even if it meant I would be paying exactly the same overall. People are funny critters, aren't they?

Two things.


1. Any tax rule that discourages work is (by my simple definition) wrong.
The LTA is distorting the market, where groups (eg 55-60 year old doctors) are retiring in droves as a direct result.
Benefits withdrawal is also curious in part, where incentives appear perverse. For example, the large numbers of people who work exactly 16 hrs pw to avoid the benefits cap and optimise benefits arrangements.
The marginal tax rates sit in this general category as well. I know many families who Salary Sacrifice down to £50k to retain their child benefit. I am also aware of several peers (and myself) who Sal Sac down to £100,000 in order to avoid the loss of Personal Allowance. Others work part time as well as or instead of Sal Sac at both the £50,000 and £100,000 levels.


2. at high marginal tax rates, the balance shifts.
At some point, you start asking yourself why you are working an extra hour, when the majority of it is going into someone else's pocket.
I don't feel hard done by if I am enjoying the majority of the proceeds of my labour. However when the hour I work has ers NI, tax, ees NI deducted, and I am in one of the high marginal bands (£50,000 to £60,000 ; £100,000 to £130,000 odd) then I rather resent that I see so little fruits of that labour. I will ultimately stop or slow down, rather than continue, once I get to 55 and can access the pension.

woolly_wombat

ex-pat_scot wrote: »

Two things.


1. Any tax rule that discourages work is (by my simple definition) wrong.
The LTA is distorting the market, where groups (eg 55-60 year old doctors) are retiring in droves as a direct result.

My favourite GP in our practice quit suddenly at 55, and I am fearful that we could lose two more in the near future for the same reason.

The consequences of this LTA fiasco were all too predictable and I personally feel very angry with Osborne for not thinking this one through at a time of GP shortages and an ageing population.