what to do - approaching pension age

[juliew1499]

hi

 

my husband and I hope to emmigrate to Melbourne on a Parents contributory visa in about 2/3 years. We need advice about what to do with our pensions. State pension x 2 we know will be frozen and we can't transfer it.My husband has about 5 different company pension schemes. Am I right in thinking that it would be too late to consider QROPS as I believe you can't draw anything out in Oz for 10 yrs without HMRC demanding 55%? Am I right that HMRC would let us have the pensions gross and then be taxed under the Oz system? I realise we would be subject to exchange rate ups and downs.

[Notts]

The 10 years is just for reporting, I thought. The QROPS administrator has to tell HMRC about transactions, but it is only those transactions that are not allowed under UK tax rules that attract the 55% charge.

[juliew1499]

Thanks for your reply but I'm still confused. We are both now in our early 60's and so we'd expect to be drawing a pension at about the time we moved to Oz. I thought you had to leave the QROPS pension pot alone for 10 years before you could draw on it.

[Bridgeman]

Thanks for your reply but I'm still confused. We are both now in our early 60's and so we'd expect to be drawing a pension at about the time we moved to Oz. I thought you had to leave the QROPS pension pot alone for 10 years before you could draw on it.

I

 

Hi. I also came to Oz on a CPV and have recently transferred my pension to a QROPS and am about to start drawing this - first payment due next month!. This is what we were told by our adviser as I understand it. You are able to transfer your pensions to a QROPS scheme under the age of 65 and as long as you have not started to draw it. After that you need to be working. You need to be a permanent resident first I believe. However, you should really take advice as to whether it would be best to transfer your pension to Australia. Sometimes if the pension is an index linked final salary pension, we were advised to leave this in the UK. The downside of this is that you will be taxed in Australia on a pension drawn from overseas, but if your income is low anyway, this may not affect you. The main advantage of transferring our money purchase scheme to a QROPS is that you can draw it tax free in Australia. The pension is still subject to HMRC rules for five years, the main restriction being that you can only still draw 25% as a lump sum and there is a limit to the amount you can draw which cannot be more than you would have received in the UK I believe. Any withdrawals over and above this would be taxed at the 55% I believe. The QROPS still has to report to HMRC for another five years.

 

Also if you are going to transfer your pension over to Oz you need to do this within six months of becoming a permanent resident or you will be taxed on any growth in the pension from the time you became residents to the time you bring the pension over. In our case however, this was practically zero as the performance was pretty poor over the past year!

 

As I said I took professional advice as to whether to transfer the pension over and also got a professional to do this for me. It did take some time, so you would need to be able to have some income while you were waiting for everything to be sorted out.

[juliew1499]

Hi Bridgeman

 

Thanks for the info was really useful! Hope you are enjoying yoour new life in Oz.