Help with the numbers, please, for new SIPP investor.

hoofy

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

Did you pay your accountant for pension advice?  It would be in your terms of engagement.

Probably not, although I would have thought he still might have mentioned it as a way to reduce my tax bill? Would that be expecting too much from the person I pay to look after my tax affairs?  If I had of expressed an interest in a suggestion that I might want to contribute to a pension, I'm sure I would have been put in touch with the person from the practice who specialises in pensions, who would have informed me of additional charges.

Joey_Soap

OP - Mildly off topic, but in two decades of running nano-limited companies, I have come to realise how useless accountants generally are. In my experience (same as with investing really), you must take responsibility for everything and never trust an accountant to do anything. And I mean to the extent that in some cases they cannot even add up correctly. I encourage you to educate yourself to the extent that you use an accountant for convenience, certainly do not trust anything they say or do to be correct. Check everything they say or do. And never expect any proactivity from them towards your general economic well being or that of your company.  As you may have guessed,  I no longer use an accountant.

Albermarle

Joey_Soap said:

OP - Mildly off topic, but in two decades of running nano-limited companies, I have come to realise how useless accountants generally are. In my experience (same as with investing really), you must take responsibility for everything and never trust an accountant to do anything. And I mean to the extent that in some cases they cannot even add up correctly. I encourage you to educate yourself to the extent that you use an accountant for convenience, certainly do not trust anything they say or do to be correct. Check everything they say or do. And never expect any proactivity from them towards your general economic well being or that of your company.  As you may have guessed,  I no longer use an accountant.

Reminds me of an old joke .
A guy in a hot air balloon , has lost his way and slowly descends to earth to  try and find out where he is .
He sees another man on the ground and shouts down to him ' Where am I ?' the man shouts back 'You are in a hot air balloon'
The guy in the balloon shouts back ' You must be an accountant ?' and he replies ' yes I am how did you know that ?'
'Because the info you gave was 100% accurate and 100% useless ' 

AlanP_2

I was advised to choose an accounant based on the answer to 1 simple question:

What does 2+2 equal?


If the answer was 3 or 5 - Reject as they can't count

If the answer was 4 - Reject as too honest

If the answer was "What number do you want / need it to be" - That's the one you want

hoofy

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

You cannot use carry forward.  Principally because you haven't had s pension scheme in the previous years but you also need to have pensionable earnings (which dividends aren't) in excess of £40,000 for carry forward to even be relevant.

And unless you have omitted some vital information you cannot contribute £6,400 either, never mind the £20,000 later in this tax year.

Based on your post your maximum contribution would be £6,080.  Which the pension company would add £1,520 basic rate tax relief to make a gross contribution of £7,600 (the maximum gross amount you can contribute).

You need to ask your accountant to explain why they think what you posted about your personal contributions is possible?

I rang him today and told him that since he'd given me the recommended figures I'd opened a SIPP with the £6400 personal and also £32000 from my company but I'd also been doing some reading and that I couldn't for the life of me understand where he got the "£20000 in a few months" figure from because I'd never held a pension before so it couldn't be from carry forward from the previous 3 years.  He said he'd speak to the practice pensions expert who gave him the figures in the first place and he'd get back to me.

He rang me back half an hour later and told me that I couldn't put a further £20000 in as I hadn't had a pension in the previous 3 years.
I thanked him and hung up.
Looks like I will be doing my own tax calculations from now on and will use my accountant only as someone to fill the forms in for me and deal with HMRC.