Thousands more make contact with long lost pension funds
13 May 2014
The Department for Work and Pensions has reported that more and more people have been making contact with their lost pension funds using the government’s free Pension Tracing Service. Latest figures show that in the past year alone almost 145,000 people have used the service to locate those long forgotten pensions. This is more than double the number who used the service in 2010, with numbers rising year on year. By 2018 all employers will have to provide a workplace pension and with the average person having 11 jobs in their lifetime this could lead to 50 million dormant and lost pension pots by 2050. The government announced last year that it was introducing a system whereby if you move job your pension pot moves too. The ‘pot follows member’ system will mean that any pots of less than £10,000 will automatically move with them.
Minister for Pensions Steve Webb said:
“With the new flexibilities announced at the Budget it is now even more important that people can access all of their pension saving. People who have already lost touch with a pension can use our free tracing service to track down their fund and many more are.
Soon it will be the norm that when you move job your small pension pot moves with you. This will reduce the costs of providing pensions and help people to plan for their future.
The Pension Tracing Service helps individuals to find occupational and personal pensions that they have lost track of. It uses a database containing information on more than 200,000 pension schemes. The free service provides contact details of the potential scheme administrator to enable customers to make subsequent enquiries.”
To find out if the Pension Tracing Service could help you:
visit www.gov.uk/find-lost-pension call 0845 600 2537 (textphone 0845 300 0169) – lines are open Monday to Friday, 8.00am to 6.00pm
Pension savings annual allowance calculators
14 May 2014
This calculator now provides a standard and enhanced version. The new standard calculator is for customers who have not previously needed to consider the use of carry forward for any of the previous three tax years. From 6 April 2014 the annual allowance for tax relief on pension savings in a registered pension scheme was reduced to £40,000. This includes contributions made by anyone else into your pension such as your employer. If your pension savings exceed this amount you'll have to pay a tax charge and give details of this on a Self Assessment tax return.
The rules allow you to carry forward any unused annual allowance from the 3 previous tax years to offset this charge
Follow the link below for full details.
CIPP Policy News Journal
08/04/2015, Page 373 of 521
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