Lifetime Allowance Statement

Marcon

Worth a look to see how many answers this thread might give you: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6610314/should-i-access-my-personal-pension-to-make-use-of-tax-threshold#latest

Goober11

Marcon said:

Worth a look to see how many answers this thread might give you: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6610314/should-i-access-my-personal-pension-to-make-use-of-tax-threshold#latest

Thanks, that is a really interesting thread. It sets out clearly why it's worth using up all unused tax free allowances which is not relevant in my case due to my DB pension which takes me over the TFA limit. 

I think I will take up Albermarle's advice and set up new thread. Cheers.

Albermarle

Goober11 said:

Marcon said:

Worth a look to see how many answers this thread might give you: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6610314/should-i-access-my-personal-pension-to-make-use-of-tax-threshold#latest

Thanks, that is a really interesting thread. It sets out clearly why it's worth using up all unused tax free allowances which is not relevant in my case due to my DB pension which takes me over the TFA limit. 

I think I will take up Albermarle's advice and set up new thread. Cheers.

If you have a good retirement income, there is an argument to take taxable income up to the 40% tax level. For example before the state pension arrives. .

Triumph13

You're okay at the moment, but you have a couple of risks to watch out for in the future:
TFLS Limit
You have a reasonable bit of headroom at the moment as £70k + 25% of your DC is below the £268k limit, but if you leave the DC untouched for too long you could easily breach that through investment growth - particularly if the limit doesn't get increased for inflation.  Crystallising and taking tax free cash protects you from this risk.
Higher Rate Tax
Your DB + state pension + a sustainable drawdown from the DC could fairly easily put you into higher rate tax at some point.  You avoid that by taking taxable income now to use up more (all?) of your 20% band.  Downside risk on that is if you die before age 75 your spouse would have been able to take the money out tax free.

In your shoes I'd be looking to take enough out in both categories to be fairly confident that you won't hit problems without really good investment returns - which would be a nice problem to have anyway