UPP on UK Civil Service Pension.

[DavidG]

I am about to complete my tax return and I know I can claim UPP on my State Pension at 8%. I also have a Civil Service Pension of around £6000 per annum. Can I claim UPP for this as I did contribute for this. I think the current rate for contributions is 4.6% for 2015.

if I can, how far back can I claim? We arrived here in 2007 on a 432 Visa and now are Australian Citizens. I also have an Army Pension on the AFPS , but I don't think that is eligible for UPP deduction.

 

David

[Mike@Bonbeach]

I too have a similar situation. I have sent a copy of the UPP forms to my private pension provider in the UK and they are having difficulty in understanding the questions. They have now referred it to their "technical department" for comment.

If I get any news I'll pass it on.

Mike

[datstheone]

I am also trying to sort out information for seeing if my University pension is eligible. I think that my pension provider has now given me all the information that I need regarding my contributions and the Cash Equivalent Transfer Value at the time I retired. What I am still not sure about is whether there is any inflation allowance for contributions as I have my actual contributions for each individual year and 1975 £ not worth as much as 2010 £ when I retired and when pension was valued.

 

Also not sure which years to put in for claim. Is it something I have to do each year, so claim for 2015-16 now and then repeat every year. Or can I get a % that I can just apply each year in the future?

 

Now I have all the information I think I need I am wondering whether to book an appointment at ATO customer centre in Sydney to get advice there.

[Mike@Bonbeach]

I am also trying to sort out information for seeing if my University pension is eligible. I think that my pension provider has now given me all the information that I need regarding my contributions and the Cash Equivalent Transfer Value at the time I retired. What I am still not sure about is whether there is any inflation allowance for contributions as I have my actual contributions for each individual year and 1975 £ not worth as much as 2010 £ when I retired and when pension was valued.

 

Also not sure which years to put in for claim. Is it something I have to do each year, so claim for 2015-16 now and then repeat every year. Or can I get a % that I can just apply each year in the future?

 

Now I have all the information I think I need I am wondering whether to book an appointment at ATO customer centre in Sydney to get advice there.

 

You have nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain, if you're able to get an appointment with ATO then go for it. Please let us know how you get on.

Mike

[datstheone]

An update in case it helps anyone else.

 

In the end I decided the best thing to do was to fill in the UPP form (https://www.ato.gov.au/uploadedFiles/Content/SPR/downloads/spr19285n16543_01_2015.pdf) and send it off to see what happened, hoping that it would get looked at by someone who understood it. This worked and I have just received a private ruling giving me an allowance that I can use in my tax returns.

 

In order to get the ruling I needed to have details of my payments into my pension scheme. My pension company supplied me with the details of all my annual contributions which need to be added up to give the total for the form. There doesn't seem to be any allowance for inflation, just a sum of the actual contributions.

 

I also needed the value of the pension at the time I retired. This is something called Cash Equivalent Transfer Value, CETV. Again I had to get this from my pension company, but as I have already retired they needed to get this calculated and charged a fee for this. So just about break even on the cost of this and the tax savings for this year, but as a one off no future fees.

 

As I get the whole pension and no residual capital value the UPP is simply what I paid in divided by my wife's life expectancy at the time I retired (ATO use youngest spouse for this, in this case her). Also things are simplified by the fact that I spent my entire working life in UK University sector so have a single private pension. I guess that if someone has multiple private pensions they will need a UPP ruling on each pension.

 

UPP is a fixed sum based on values at time of retirement, so it will not change over the years as pension goes up. It is quoted in GBP so actual allowance will depend on ATO exchange rate for any given tax year. For this year it comes out as just over 5% of pension being tax free so on my estimates I am saving around $1000 on my total tax bill.

 

Although the ruling was requested and given for the 2015-16 tax year there is a note that says that if nothing changes in the information given it can apply for more than just that tax year.

 

I hope that this information might be of use to anyone else with a private pension or pensions.