Just a thought. There are special taxation rules if your pension pot goes over £1.3 million or so. You don\’t get tax relief is it?Or you pay more tax because of the relief you\’ve had? Something like that?
The last time I asked this question I was told that public sector pensions were subject to the same rules, some method was used to add up future payments and compare them to the sum required to purchase an equivalent annuity. This was then measured against the £1,3 million limit and the appropriate tax then levied (or not, as the case may be).
So:
The civil servant who became infamous for declaring his department was doomed is to pick up the most generous public-sector pension ever awarded — worth a total of almost £2.7 million — when he retires this month.
Will his pension pot be caught by these rules?
No. There was some transitional gubbins put in to protect people who had already built up enormous pension pots.
See, for example, http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/rpsmmanual/RPSM03100020.htm
I won’t bore you with the details but any one with a pension pot above the limit pays additional tax on the cash taken out and the income, except that civil service mandarins, judges and MPs are exempt.
Tim adds: I knew that judges were. But MPs and civil servants? The fuckers!