self assessment state pension statement

MetaPhysical

I won't mind doing the SA in retirement, it's no big deal to me personally doing one online - admittedly since I am used to doing them.  I can understand why they could be scary to some people though.

Flugelhorn

MetaPhysical said:

I won't mind doing the SA in retirement, it's no big deal to me personally doing one online - admittedly since I am used to doing them.  I can understand why they could be scary to some people though.

I have never minded it either, get to hang on to the money for a bit longer - used to have an offset mortgage and sat all the untaxed, or not quite taxed enough income in there until the end of January bill had to be paid 

Dazed_and_C0nfused

MetaPhysical said:

OK, thanks.  Can you "select" which of the streams gets the PA set against it?

How would they then know about taxed interest if you go over the threshold?

Yes.  HMRC systems will probably determine it in the order the pensions start but you can ask them to make a specific one (not State Pension) your "main" source of PAYE income and then the others would be subsidiary sources (called secondary sources nowadays it seems).

Taxed interest is becoming rarer and rarer these days and I think they tend to rely on you telling them about it.  Or do you mean untaxed interest?

dales1

Flugelhorn said:

How many pensioners do self assessment?

Answer: Both of us, in our household. (That's 100% of this sample). 

But please note that it doesn't take much money to be in that situation.

Let's say you inherit say just £80k (or more) from your deceased parents, and you can't get it all into ISAs that year.

Then you might reasonably put the balance into a GIA Vanguard global tracker, with annual dividends at say 1.5%.

That busts your dividend allowance of £500pa, and is Foreign Income.

.. Self Assessment is required !!

So yes, I do think plenty of pensioners are under the cosh of self assessment.

And it does cause difficult decisions, in old age:

What they ask is:

Can I still cope with the SA regime complexities?

Or shall I cash out from investments into cash?

Those who in the last year or so decided upon simplicity (like Mrs D) and moved into cash (to avoid SA complexities) have lost out on huge recent stock market gains (/rant).

Dales.

Sarahspangles

dales1 said:

Let's say you inherit say just £80k (or more) from your deceased parents, and you can't get it all into ISAs that year.

OH had the combination of a Pension Commencement Lump Sum and inheritance in consecutive tax years. Similarly, he couldn’t get this into ISAs fast enough, and a SIPP wasn’t an option because he was already retired. He’s now required to submit a return on the basis of his bank interest alone.