pensions shouldnt be open market, they should be some kind of PPP. otherwise you will end up with the savers paying for those that didnt save in terms of increased state welfare.
what cannot be allowed to happen again is people left with even less than the capital sum they have put in because its disappeared up some merchant bankers nose.
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
To me it is a receipe for disaster. The rich boys running this Government are totally out of touch with the masses, people will cash in their pension pots, lose it, piss it up against a wall, or waste it on trivia. They will then be reliant on the rest of us to pay for them, I can't fancy Labour or the Liberals at any price so here I come Nigel !
Beer reduced by 1p for the second year running. The problem is, pubs always seem to round their prices to the nearest 10p, so no change (literally). But even if they reduced it by 20p, most pubs wouldn't lower the price and would look at it as extra income for them.
The pension changes are a master-stroke - it virtually guarantees that Labour cannot do another pensions smash-and-grab like they did after they won in 1997. Gordon Brown wiped billions off the collective value of the UK's pension schemes, and due to legislation pensioners had to sit there and take it. Now if Labour win in 2015, any attempt to rob pensioner's of their hard-earned money and they'll simply move it out of their pension schemes.
Also, anyone in the pension game will tell you that pension schemes and annuities are taking customers for a ride and for too long - high charges and fees coupled with exit penalties and tax charges for drawing your income were eroding people's life savings. Now they actually literally have to compete against a mattress stuffed with money - say what you want, a mattress isn't going to rob £200 or so pounds a year off your pension in admin fees.
The big risk is obviously that people without big pots will simply waste their money and then fall back on state support, but this has always been the case - there is no requirement to buy an annuity, small pots can already be taken as lump sums and any pot between 100-200k definitely can't buy an annuity that coupled with the state pension comes close to covering the cost of living. What the changes do improve though is that annuity providers now need to provide much better rates of return, otherwise people aren't going to be interested. Decently invested outside a pension wrapper and you could get a decent amount in interest/dividends/capital appreciation from a 200k pension pot, whereas currently an annuity bought with that amount would barely cover your gas and food bills.
for me the most disappointing aspect is the 1% staged incremental rise for the 40% tax threshold. (which is below wage inflation and so therefore is actually a net loss for most taxpayers)
415 quid difference...so the effect on your pocket is 80 pounds or so annually. is the cost of constantly changing these thresholds every year not equivalent? just seems a rather cack-handed way of going about things, creating more work for an already under-staffed and woefully under-resourced HMRC. still at least tax practioners will have more work.
apart from the administration cost issue, i dont have many other criticisms. prudent budget is unfortunately completely necessary.
This is a contentious subject, but do people feel that £41k is too low a threshold to apply 40% tax. The reasons I believe this is too low a figure are:-
If you are a married couple with say just one/two children, and only one of you works and earns just £41k, does that not put a huge strain on your disposable income. I know people get childcare allowance, but it just seems to me that with the cost of childcare, rent/mortgages, utility bills etc, this doesn't add up.
I don't have children so aren't in a position to comment, and don't get me wrong I am sure people get by on lower amounts than this, but surely it could be raised. Obviously there are numerous economic reasons it is the rate it is for the purpose of funding public services etc, but it just seems to me everything is bloody expensive at the moment and disposable income is getting squeezed hard.
Even if you are a younger person in and around this sort of wage bracket without children, you might have mountains of student debt, little chance of saving a decent deposit for a home, let alone a good pension.
As an IFA of over 20 years standing I think I may be in slightly better position to comment on here than most of you who are spouting off a load of piffle.
Firstly - pensions plan nowdays are very good value & if taken out since 2006 have very low charges. No transfer penalties or capital units (look it up) and I know that most of my clients have made double digit returns (after charges) over the past 5 years.
Secondly - I can't see why suddenly there should be conmen lurking round every corner to take peoples money from them. Most people who want to unlock their pension cash can do so legit after age 55 anyway - currently the option is an annuity or drawdown. All Osborne is doing is giving people the option of taking a small annuity of , say, £200 pm or exchanging it for a lump sum (say, £30k). I reckon most will take the later course & put the money in the bank to live off, or invest it in Premium Bonds etc.
Thirdly - If this money runs out, so what ?? They wont be able to go to the govt for benefits as there wont be any. The basic pension is being increased to £145 pw to take this into account and pension tax credits are being abolished.
It is actually a very cunning way of raising money for the govt as the small annuity of £200pm is below the tax threshold, even when the new £145 pw is added in. However, the £30k lump sum will be taxed (at 20%) so raising revenue Any pots greater than £40k once the tax free amount has be taken will then attract some tax at 40%.
Finally - you can still take an annuity if you want to - and those who smoke or are diabetic or have a serious illness may want to as they get a bigger income than normal.
My partner's uncle retired a few years back with a hefty pot from well paid work in a decent private employer. Everything was fine until one day he couldn't come to a family thing as his shares had gone down. He died a couple of years ago and I cleared part of the house. He was an intelligent man. I found pages and pages of notes with people with English names and Spanish numbers and it was obvious he'd been scammed by boiler rooms. I can't tell for sure but its my belief that being robbed like this contributed to his early death.
I think there will be a lot more like that. Salesmen are very persuasive. I'm all for letting people take their own choices, but unless scammers, both legal and illegal, are clamped down on this will end up being an enormous boost for them.
I would have thought that those who have saved for years for their pensions are the least likely to blow it all as soon as they retire.
I'm massively in favour of this. Annuity rates are so awful that I would almost certainly have had to wait until 65 to retire under the old system (despite already having a very decent pension pot in my mid-40s). This gives me a bunch of options I can start to think about when I get to my late 50s.
The people entering retirement age are one of the most spoiled generations ever. bought their home for probably less than 10% of what its worth now (i doubt that that will ever be repeated), pure vote grabbing really, even though I do believe pension needs reform for future generations. It's a lot harder to save now for people my age (early 20s) than it was for people older. Liking the new ISA in that respect. One step at a time as they say.
for me the most disappointing aspect is the 1% staged incremental rise for the 40% tax threshold. (which is below wage inflation and so therefore is actually a net loss for most taxpayers)
415 quid difference...so the effect on your pocket is 80 pounds or so annually. is the cost of constantly changing these thresholds every year not equivalent? just seems a rather cack-handed way of going about things, creating more work for an already under-staffed and woefully under-resourced HMRC. still at least tax practioners will have more work.
apart from the administration cost issue, i dont have many other criticisms. prudent budget is unfortunately completely necessary.
This is a contentious subject, but do people feel that £41k is too low a threshold to apply 40% tax. The reasons I believe this is too low a figure are:-
If you are a married couple with say just one/two children, and only one of you works and earns just £41k, does that not put a huge strain on your disposable income. I know people get childcare allowance, but it just seems to me that with the cost of childcare, rent/mortgages, utility bills etc, this doesn't add up.
I don't have children so aren't in a position to comment, and don't get me wrong I am sure people get by on lower amounts than this, but surely it could be raised. Obviously there are numerous economic reasons it is the rate it is for the purpose of funding public services etc, but it just seems to me everything is bloody expensive at the moment and disposable income is getting squeezed hard.
Even if you are a younger person in and around this sort of wage bracket without children, you might have mountains of student debt, little chance of saving a decent deposit for a home, let alone a good pension.
Fiscal drag has meant it probably is too low now. I read somewhere that to get it back to previous levels, the threshold would have to be around the £70k mark.
However that ignores one important fact. Back in 1978/79, say, tax rates were: a starting rate of 25%, a basic rate of 33% and higher rates between 40% and 83%.
Now more people are paying the higher rates of tax (around 4.5mn compared with around 0.7mn then). But the "take" (as a percentage of the total) from basic rate tax is much lower because the basic rate is 20% not 33%. A significant difference and a significant gain for most average tax payers.
Instead it might be more appropriate to look at where the tax take comes from: In 1978/79 the top 1% of earners paid 11% of total income tax; the top 10% paid 35%; and the top 50% paid 82%. In other words 50% of wage earners contributed bugger all to income tax coffers.
The latest figures are: top 1% paid 23% of total income tax; top 10% paid 53%; and top 50% paid 89%. So, now, 50% of tax payers contribute only 11% of the tax take.
It's interesting is it not that despite all the bleating from the left-wing press, the tax burden on the wealthiest has increased considerably under successive Govts. (including this one) whether they have been left or right wing. Indeed the wealthy and middle classes might look quite fondly back to the days of the Labour Govt under James Callaghan!
@golfaddick - I'd be disappointed if any of your clients didn't make double-digit returns over the past five years given how both equities and bonds have performed over that period. I don't think it's reasonable to use it as a benchmark for what is attainable in the long-run given how rare it is to have a period of modest (but positive) growth, zero interest rates and low inflation (all factors which have driven up the aforementioned asset classes).
More generally I'd make the following observations:
- I can imagine many people who retire at say 60 or 65 might like to spend a disproportionate amount of their pot in the subsequent 5-10 years whilst they are still young enough to enjoy it - assuming they live longer than that, they may be happy having a simpler life thereafter knowing they fulfilled any remaining dreams for travel etc. This is a good example of what I meant above about freedom surely being a good thing.
- There should probably be some type of official 'opt-in' to having greater freedom in ones pension (in the same way you have to sign a risk disclaimer or be a 'qualified indvidual' to invest in certain asset classes like warrants or hedge funds). Whilst this wouldn't entirely stop people being fleeced or taking risks they don't understand, at least they can have their attention drawn to it.
- The ISA limit going up to £15k pa is a really big deal - the idea of building up a nest egg via ISAs was always quite attractive (despite them being a post-tax form of saving) because they are flexible (can dip in and out) and the income taken further down the line is tax-free. This significant increase in the annual limit now makes them even more attractive as an alternative (or complement).
Sorry forgot to say - I'm just talking income tax here. Other tax harvests (the back door ones so loved by Gordon Brown) will have had a further distorting effect. There's no doubt that NICs, VAT, fuel duty, road tax, fag tax, flight tax, tax on pension funds, etc, etc have all massively increased since 1978/9. But we all demand that we get certain services "free" like welfare, NHS, education, defence, child care allowances, etc etc so I'm afraid it's all got to be paid for somehow hasn't it?
My partner's uncle retired a few years back with a hefty pot from well paid work in a decent private employer. Everything was fine until one day he couldn't come to a family thing as his shares had gone down. He died a couple of years ago and I cleared part of the house. He was an intelligent man. I found pages and pages of notes with people with English names and Spanish numbers and it was obvious he'd been scammed by boiler rooms. I can't tell for sure but its my belief that being robbed like this contributed to his early death.
I think there will be a lot more like that. Salesmen are very persuasive. I'm all for letting people take their own choices, but unless scammers, both legal and illegal, are clamped down on this will end up being an enormous boost for them.
Sadly, this scenario is far more common than is appreciated.
Cost to UK economy of Mass Marketing Fraud (that's scams like your uncle fell for) in 2013 = £3.5b*
Cost of rogue trading to UK consumers = £3.3b annually and rising
If anyone thinks the criminals perpetrating these crimes are going to sit around while their potential victims have easy access to their pension funds they are deluding themselves. That's without factoring in the dodgy geezers setting themselves up offering land banking schemes or bundling up buy-to-let investment packages or worthless timeshare deals, etc, etc.
Despite what Golfie says there will be a lot of unintended consequences to this policy imo and experience.
*for comparison purposes btw benefit fraud cost the UK £1.2b in the same year yet oddly that's the one that gets the headlines and resources.
Instead it might be more appropriate to look at where the tax take comes from: In 1978/79 the top 1% of earners paid 11% of total income tax; the top 10% paid 35%; and the top 50% paid 82%. In other words 50% of wage earners contributed bugger all to income tax coffers.
The latest figures are: top 1% paid 23% of total income tax; top 10% paid 53%; and top 50% paid 89%. So, now, 50% of tax payers contribute only 11% of the tax take.
But that's the top 10% of people, not the top 10% of income. That doesn't mean the richest have been increasingly hammered, just a reflection that they've had a bigger proportion of the country's income since the late 70s.
Sorry forgot to say - I'm just talking income tax here. Other tax harvests (the back door ones so loved by Gordon Brown) will have had a further distorting effect. There's no doubt that NICs, VAT, fuel duty, road tax, fag tax, flight tax, tax on pension funds, etc, etc have all massively increased since 1978/9. But we all demand that we get certain services "free" like welfare, NHS, education, defence, child care allowances, etc etc so I'm afraid it's all got to be paid for somehow hasn't it?
was going to pick you up on this but you expanded your original point. VAT in 1979 was 8% and was doubled by Geoffrey Howe. Raised again by Norman Lamont in 1991 to 17.5% and then again to 20% by the current govt. Lamont also introduced it on fuel. The indirect taxes like this have a greater impact on the poor, as you're likely to spend all your income when you've not got much cash. Apart from food (not including takeaways) just under 20p in every £1 you spend goes on tax (higher for alcohol, tobacco and petrol). So I think it is not as clear cut as you make out that the poorest 50% of earners pay less tax.
Agree with Golfie. One strong motive must have been that HMRC will get the tax in one lump rather than from 20 years of taxing an annuity so give a short term boost to the Exchequer.
Well off pensioners often don't take the cash, they prefer income. They have enough of a headache investing the assets they already have and an income drawdown is often preferred, with many just letting it ride until they need it. Pensioners with small pots (less than £18k) can already take it all in cash. £18k will not deliver much more than £50 a month, so why would you want to protect someone against spending £18k as opposed to taking £50 a month pocket money.
If your pension pot is big enough to live off, it should be big enough to frighten you into acting sensibly. Why should every other country in the World work on a system that expects pensioners to take responsibility apart from the UK.
The proposal is that everyone will receive free generic "guidance" and can choose to pay for more specific personal advice. If they ignore the guidance which will explain the pitfalls and advantages of different choices, and what fallback support the State provides, what more nannying do we have to provide.
I hope the guidance will be good enough to show that you don't have to let the likes of Hargreaves Lansdown get their hands on your money to do the correct thing. Also, schemes will have responsibility to ensure employees get this guidance. It means they should be able to control what advisers are let loose on pensioners who want advice, and can control what is charged. Advisers currently can pick off individuals and sell them a lucrative service because the alternatives may not be available within the schemes themselves.
As Golfie says the whole system has been hugely cleaned up for the future, and charges have fallen dramatically, no consolation to those ripped off in the past though.
If your pension pot is big enough to live off, it should be big enough to frighten you into acting sensibly. Why should every other country in the World work on a system that expects pensioners to take responsibility apart from the UK.
The proposal is that everyone will receive free generic "guidance" and can choose to pay for more specific personal advice. If they ignore the guidance which will explain the pitfalls and advantages of different choices, and what fallback support the State provides, what more nannying do we have to provide.
The £3b a year lost to scam mailing alone is a bit of a clue to how much more "nannying" is required (some of us might see it as support for the vulnerable though...)
Boiler room scams have absolutely nothing to do with pension legislation. There will always be thieves and con-men but for the Govt to insist that people must have their own pension pot drip-fed to them to protect them from such rogues is deeply patronising to many and imposes unreasonable restrictions on even more.
PS one of those thieves was the former Chancellor of the Exchequer who helped himself to a massive slug of pension pots.
People complain about the lack of community these days and then attack the 1p tax drop on beer which ultimately benefits the centre of many local communities - pubs. Say a brewery brews 10 million pints, that's £100,000 they save in tax alone. They could hire more people for the brewery, expand the brewery and pay builders etc or pass the savings on to pubs. The pubs then can hire another member of staff or pass the savings onto you, the consumer.
That's how it works in theory... Then again, the CEO of the brewery could just sit on his growing pile of cash...
I am a voluntary adviser for the Pensions Advisory Service and from what I see, the support people need is fit for purpose regulators and education, not nannying as if everyone is feeble minded. How you stop criminals is another debate.
Instead it might be more appropriate to look at where the tax take comes from: In 1978/79 the top 1% of earners paid 11% of total income tax; the top 10% paid 35%; and the top 50% paid 82%. In other words 50% of wage earners contributed bugger all to income tax coffers.
The latest figures are: top 1% paid 23% of total income tax; top 10% paid 53%; and top 50% paid 89%. So, now, 50% of tax payers contribute only 11% of the tax take.
But that's the top 10% of people, not the top 10% of income. That doesn't mean the richest have been increasingly hammered, just a reflection that they've had a bigger proportion of the country's income since the late 70s.
This. If you look at the proportion of the richest peoples money, its a different story. Consider what they have in tax havens etc they aren't handing over a great proportion, although its a large amount. What we are seeing is growing inequality as the very rich get richer
If any person on this site or anywhere for that matter finds a pub selling beer 1p cheaper than it was before the budget I will eat my hat.
All Osborne has done is make it look like he's giving something to the beer drinking man but in fact all he's done is help his mates at the big breweries. Not only that he can't be blamed either.
I am a voluntary adviser for the Pensions Advisory Service and from what I see, the support people need is fit for purpose regulators and education, not nannying as if everyone is feeble minded. How you stop criminals is another debate.
I agree with your points about educating consumers and having a strong regulatory system in place entirely. Which is why is such a bizarre thing to do. We are moving from what seems to have been a (poorly) regulated annuity system to effectively a potential free for all for every conman and chancer around. People who have made it to the PAS are already a step ahead of the majority in that at least they know it's there!
Comments
pensions shouldnt be open market, they should be some kind of PPP. otherwise you will end up with the savers paying for those that didnt save in terms of increased state welfare.
what cannot be allowed to happen again is people left with even less than the capital sum they have put in because its disappeared up some merchant bankers nose.
Empathy and basic feelings for humanity are in us all. Therapy can help the Tories become normal I am sure. (From private health providers of course).
RivieraMember
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
To me it is a receipe for disaster. The rich boys running this Government are totally out of touch with the masses, people will cash in their pension pots, lose it, piss it up against a wall, or waste it on trivia. They will then be reliant on the rest of us to pay for them, I can't fancy Labour or the Liberals at any price so here I come Nigel !
Also, anyone in the pension game will tell you that pension schemes and annuities are taking customers for a ride and for too long - high charges and fees coupled with exit penalties and tax charges for drawing your income were eroding people's life savings. Now they actually literally have to compete against a mattress stuffed with money - say what you want, a mattress isn't going to rob £200 or so pounds a year off your pension in admin fees.
The big risk is obviously that people without big pots will simply waste their money and then fall back on state support, but this has always been the case - there is no requirement to buy an annuity, small pots can already be taken as lump sums and any pot between 100-200k definitely can't buy an annuity that coupled with the state pension comes close to covering the cost of living. What the changes do improve though is that annuity providers now need to provide much better rates of return, otherwise people aren't going to be interested. Decently invested outside a pension wrapper and you could get a decent amount in interest/dividends/capital appreciation from a 200k pension pot, whereas currently an annuity bought with that amount would barely cover your gas and food bills.
If you are a married couple with say just one/two children, and only one of you works and earns just £41k, does that not put a huge strain on your disposable income. I know people get childcare allowance, but it just seems to me that with the cost of childcare, rent/mortgages, utility bills etc, this doesn't add up.
I don't have children so aren't in a position to comment, and don't get me wrong I am sure people get by on lower amounts than this, but surely it could be raised. Obviously there are numerous economic reasons it is the rate it is for the purpose of funding public services etc, but it just seems to me everything is bloody expensive at the moment and disposable income is getting squeezed hard.
Even if you are a younger person in and around this sort of wage bracket without children, you might have mountains of student debt, little chance of saving a decent deposit for a home, let alone a good pension.
Firstly - pensions plan nowdays are very good value & if taken out since 2006 have very low charges. No transfer penalties or capital units (look it up) and I know that most of my clients have made double digit returns (after charges) over the past 5 years.
Secondly - I can't see why suddenly there should be conmen lurking round every corner to take peoples money from them. Most people who want to unlock their pension cash can do so legit after age 55 anyway - currently the option is an annuity or drawdown. All Osborne is doing is giving people the option of taking a small annuity of , say, £200 pm or exchanging it for a lump sum (say, £30k). I reckon most will take the later course & put the money in the bank to live off, or invest it in Premium Bonds etc.
Thirdly - If this money runs out, so what ?? They wont be able to go to the govt for benefits as there wont be any. The basic pension is being increased to £145 pw to take this into account and pension tax credits are being abolished.
It is actually a very cunning way of raising money for the govt as the small annuity of £200pm is below the tax threshold, even when the new £145 pw is added in. However, the £30k lump sum will be taxed (at 20%) so raising revenue Any pots greater than £40k once the tax free amount has be taken will then attract some tax at 40%.
Finally - you can still take an annuity if you want to - and those who smoke or are diabetic or have a serious illness may want to as they get a bigger income than normal.
I think there will be a lot more like that. Salesmen are very persuasive. I'm all for letting people take their own choices, but unless scammers, both legal and illegal, are clamped down on this will end up being an enormous boost for them.
I'm massively in favour of this. Annuity rates are so awful that I would almost certainly have had to wait until 65 to retire under the old system (despite already having a very decent pension pot in my mid-40s). This gives me a bunch of options I can start to think about when I get to my late 50s.
However that ignores one important fact.
Back in 1978/79, say, tax rates were: a starting rate of 25%, a basic rate of 33% and higher rates between 40% and 83%.
Now more people are paying the higher rates of tax (around 4.5mn compared with around 0.7mn then). But the "take" (as a percentage of the total) from basic rate tax is much lower because the basic rate is 20% not 33%. A significant difference and a significant gain for most average tax payers.
Instead it might be more appropriate to look at where the tax take comes from:
In 1978/79 the top 1% of earners paid 11% of total income tax; the top 10% paid 35%; and the top 50% paid 82%. In other words 50% of wage earners contributed bugger all to income tax coffers.
The latest figures are: top 1% paid 23% of total income tax; top 10% paid 53%; and top 50% paid 89%. So, now, 50% of tax payers contribute only 11% of the tax take.
It's interesting is it not that despite all the bleating from the left-wing press, the tax burden on the wealthiest has increased considerably under successive Govts. (including this one) whether they have been left or right wing. Indeed the wealthy and middle classes might look quite fondly back to the days of the Labour Govt under James Callaghan!
More generally I'd make the following observations:
- I can imagine many people who retire at say 60 or 65 might like to spend a disproportionate amount of their pot in the subsequent 5-10 years whilst they are still young enough to enjoy it - assuming they live longer than that, they may be happy having a simpler life thereafter knowing they fulfilled any remaining dreams for travel etc. This is a good example of what I meant above about freedom surely being a good thing.
- There should probably be some type of official 'opt-in' to having greater freedom in ones pension (in the same way you have to sign a risk disclaimer or be a 'qualified indvidual' to invest in certain asset classes like warrants or hedge funds). Whilst this wouldn't entirely stop people being fleeced or taking risks they don't understand, at least they can have their attention drawn to it.
- The ISA limit going up to £15k pa is a really big deal - the idea of building up a nest egg via ISAs was always quite attractive (despite them being a post-tax form of saving) because they are flexible (can dip in and out) and the income taken further down the line is tax-free. This significant increase in the annual limit now makes them even more attractive as an alternative (or complement).
Other tax harvests (the back door ones so loved by Gordon Brown) will have had a further distorting effect. There's no doubt that NICs, VAT, fuel duty, road tax, fag tax, flight tax, tax on pension funds, etc, etc have all massively increased since 1978/9.
But we all demand that we get certain services "free" like welfare, NHS, education, defence, child care allowances, etc etc so I'm afraid it's all got to be paid for somehow hasn't it?
Cost to UK economy of Mass Marketing Fraud (that's scams like your uncle fell for) in 2013 = £3.5b*
Cost of rogue trading to UK consumers = £3.3b annually and rising
If anyone thinks the criminals perpetrating these crimes are going to sit around while their potential victims have easy access to their pension funds they are deluding themselves. That's without factoring in the dodgy geezers setting themselves up offering land banking schemes or bundling up buy-to-let investment packages or worthless timeshare deals, etc, etc.
Despite what Golfie says there will be a lot of unintended consequences to this policy imo and experience.
*for comparison purposes btw benefit fraud cost the UK £1.2b in the same year yet oddly that's the one that gets the headlines and resources.
So I think it is not as clear cut as you make out that the poorest 50% of earners pay less tax.
Well off pensioners often don't take the cash, they prefer income. They have enough of a headache investing the assets they already have and an income drawdown is often preferred, with many just letting it ride until they need it. Pensioners with small pots (less than £18k) can already take it all in cash. £18k will not deliver much more than £50 a month, so why would you want to protect someone against spending £18k as opposed to taking £50 a month pocket money.
If your pension pot is big enough to live off, it should be big enough to frighten you into acting sensibly. Why should every other country in the World work on a system that expects pensioners to take responsibility apart from the UK.
The proposal is that everyone will receive free generic "guidance" and can choose to pay for more specific personal advice. If they ignore the guidance which will explain the pitfalls and advantages of different choices, and what fallback support the State provides, what more nannying do we have to provide.
I hope the guidance will be good enough to show that you don't have to let the likes of Hargreaves Lansdown get their hands on your money to do the correct thing. Also, schemes will have responsibility to ensure employees get this guidance. It means they should be able to control what advisers are let loose on pensioners who want advice, and can control what is charged. Advisers currently can pick off individuals and sell them a lucrative service because the alternatives may not be available within the schemes themselves.
As Golfie says the whole system has been hugely cleaned up for the future, and charges have fallen dramatically, no consolation to those ripped off in the past though.
PS one of those thieves was the former Chancellor of the Exchequer who helped himself to a massive slug of pension pots.
Hope this helps.
That's how it works in theory... Then again, the CEO of the brewery could just sit on his growing pile of cash...
As for the budget I think it's fairly positive and obviously Osborne will save the best stuff for next year
But seriously surely that 1p off a pint could be better utilised elsewhere
All Osborne has done is make it look like he's giving something to the beer drinking man but in fact all he's done is help his mates at the big breweries. Not only that he can't be blamed either.