How to get the most out of your Australian super if you now live in the UK
Transcript
Good evening and welcome to today’s presentation. My name is Paul Davis, and this is Kevin Tutt. Hopefully, you have all joined in for today’s webinar, ‘What to do with your Australian super if you live in the UK’. So, I am going to run through things now and then we’re going to get started. So, first of all, just to sort some disclaimers, this is basically a presentation based on the rules and legislation in both the UK & Australia as we know it today. This of course can change in the future. So, as said today, I’ll be presenting, I’m Paul Davis, one of the Financial Planning Managers here in the UK and one of the founders of bdhSterling. And as introduced earlier I’ll be with Kevin Tutt. So, today’s agenda will be running through some retirement income planning, pension contribution strategies, the value of advice, reversing the direction – that’s between the UK and Australia, a bit about bdhSterling. And we’ll be finishing off with a question-and-answer session. So, first of all, I’m going to hand over to Kevin who is going to talk through aspects of retirement income planning.
Thank you, Paul. Just move along to the first slide. OK, so retirement income planning when an individual looks to plan from their retirement, there’s a couple of things that are pretty integral to the plan and what they want to achieve. Firstly, is when do you actually want to retire? Are you looking to retire and live within the UK? Or are you looking to emigrate abroad at some point in the future for your retirement, either fully or spend some of your time in the UK and have a holiday home, say in another part of the world where you are spending a big chunk of the year there? You know, what do you want to do in retirement? What are your hobbies? What’s your expenditure going to be, which ultimately will give you some idea of how long your money’s going to last? And are you able to afford your desired retirement? So, these sort of questions and these sort of aspects of the plan, we’ll outline what it looks like and what your retirement looks like.
Next slide, please, Paul. So, one way we can stress test your plan, so to speak, is through cash flow planning. It’s an income and expenditure analysis. Within that we can include future commitments – that could be university fees for grandchildren, new car, holidays, moving house or anything that you feel that you’re going to spend funds on in the future. We can build that into the plan. And majority is a key part to your retirement income planning. Because when you first retire, you may not have any immediate additional requirements, but over your retirement over the next 30-40 years, there may or be extra expenditure that you’re looking to build into the plan and then we can again stress test the affordability. Thank you, Paul. So, the cash flow forecasting, there’s a couple of examples on the right of the slide. The top forecast has an element of red on the right-hand side. So that particular individual is likely going to run out of money. The black line at the top is how much they need to achieve to meet their desired lifestyle, so they will have some income for the rest of their life. But the red bars basically mean there’s going to be a shortfall. The example below is exactly the same clients, however, there’s no red in the in the scenario, which means that all being equal according to the assumptions that we’ve worked on, they’re not going to run out of money. We can use different assumptions around inflation, around capital growth and investment returns. We can also, as I say, I’ve used the term stress testing before. What I mean by that is that we can build into the plan, currently inflation is as high as it has been for a very long time. So, we could say over the next five years inflation stays at 6/7%, five years after that it drops down to 3 or 4%. How does the plan change if the inflation levels change. Investment returns – some years you’re going to get quite healthy investment returns, other years it’s going to be quite flat. Currently at the moment you’ll experience some negative returns. So again, we can build that into the into the plan as well to cover off every eventuality. Thanks Paul. I’ll now pass you back over to Paul for Section 2. Thank you.
Thanks, Kevin. So now we’re going to talk a little bit about pension contribution strategies. There are different tax regimes for pensions and the way it works in the UK is kind of opposite to the way it works in Australia. So, if you are going to make contributions into pensions. If you’re a UK resident contributing to a UK pension, you will receive tax relief on that contribution, as will your employer if they’re contributing too. The way contributions are made into Australian schemes that is not really true, unless you go through some kind of salary sacrifice type arrangement, you’re not going to get direct tax relief on contributions going in. It can be quite a tax efficient way, not just to build up your retirement savings, particularly in the UK, but also if you’re a higher rate tax payer, it does help bring that down if you do make contributions into UK Pension. So, it’s very important that when you’re considering, or if you’ve got the opportunity to contribute to one or the other, you make sure you maximise the most tax efficient vehicle to contribute to. So, touching on a little bit from what Kevin was speaking about earlier. When we ascertain, or we look at, people’s financial planning here in the UK, one of the first things we need to do is identify where income can come from. Now a lot of people will look at retirement and they assume that can come from pensions or even come from Australian super. But there are other products and there are other types of efficient vehicles that you can save into, such as ISAs, for example, and in some cases, offshore bonds as well. But the key thing to remember is that different sources or different products will have different benefits at the end of them. So, for example, UK pensions, you will have an element of income, you’ll have 25% tax free. If you’re retiring in Australia from Aussie super, you can get everything tax free – but obviously that’s slightly different, which we come on to later, if you’re retiring here in the UK. So, broadening out on that, the use of investment tax wrap is very important. ISAs could be a potential thing to save in, if you’re here in the UK. Tax free, tax efficient and it will allow you to take the funds out at any time you like, but you can obviously leave them there until saving. If you’re moving back to Australia, you have to then think a little bit more carefully about any sort of tax wrappers that you have built up in the UK, because they might not work so tax efficiently as they would do if you were a UK tax resident when accessing. So, I’m going to hand back to Kevin now to talk a little bit about the value of advice.
Thank you, Paul, if you could click on the first slide of section 3 please. OK, the value of advice. Why come to an adviser? With the professional advice that we can offer, we can create a very bespoke plan for you and your circumstances. It’s a structured way to offer you clarity on what plan you want to put in place. Is it achievable? And more pertinent, once the plan is in place to have regular reviews to check that you’re on track to continue to meet your objectives, which is obviously very important. Next slide, please, Paul. Insuring tax efficient withdrawals from your superannuation. If we look at the steps involved, there’s two release conditions that you have to meet to make unlimited withdrawals from your super. The first one is age. You have to admit Preservation age. And secondly, you have to be retired. Alternatively reach the age of 65. If you’re 65 and still working, it doesn’t make any difference. You can make unlimited withdrawals. But prior to age 65 (Preservation age) and being retired. There is a sliding scale on preservation age, but currently if you’re if you were born after July 1964, the preservation age will be 60. Foreign Service Relief. You may be able to claim Foreign Service Relief on your withdrawals, which will make them very tax efficient. There is a specific return that you need to lodge with HMRC, to see whether you’re eligible for Foreign Service Relief, and that’s something here at bdhSterling that we can give you advice on and help you. With HMRC claiming Foreign Service Relief if it’s applicable to you. Broadly speaking, when you’re ready to make the withdrawal, there’ll be two components within your superannuation scheme. There’ll be the taxable components and the non-taxable component. It’s worth remembering that here in the UK, if you had a UK pension, you could withdraw your 25% tax free cash and keep the balance for a later date and use that as income or future withdrawals as and when required. When you withdraw from your superannuation, you have to take the taxable component and then and the non-taxable component at the same time. Not all of it. However, to give you an example. If you had a superannuation and let’s say a nice easy example, the value was calculated the 50% taxable and 50% non-taxable. Every $100 you bring over to the UK – $50, in theory is tax-free. And $50 would be taxable, but you have to bring the same percentage / the same proportion over on each withdrawal. Just be careful on the QROPS rule. If you had a superannuation in Australia which previously was in receipt of a UK transfer from a UK pension. The rules on how it’s taxed is slightly different. At bdhSterling we can work those calculations and give you the advice. If it’s a straightforward superannuation scheme, or in fact, previously you’ve had a UK transfer transferred in, OK?
Next slide, please, Paul. Just finally on the departing Australian super superannuation payments (DASP) – that’s only available if you’ve left Australia on a temporary visa, you’ll be entitled to have the super balance paid to you. It is taxable. It’s not something which at bdhSterling we give advice on specifically. But if you if you were a resident of Australia and left on a on a temporary visa, we can certainly help you with the government website you need to apply to get your Australian superannuation paid over to you. It’s not something that’s bdhSterling specifically give advice on. Thank you, Paul. I now pass you back to Paul for Section 4. Thank you.
Thanks, Kevin. So now I’m going to talk a little bit about reversing direction. Lots of people will move between the UK and Australia, Australia and the UK, and they do this kind of more than once during the course of their lifetime. So, it’s quite important to consider what you should be doing during the periods of time that you were in one country or another. As Kevin alluded to earlier, super access is possible from preservation age 60 or age 65, your meet condition of release, whether you’re working or not and age 60 and retired. Unlike if you were moving in the direction of UK to Australia you can’t actually physically transfer your Australian super into a UK Pension scheme and that’s very important to ascertain. I think the main thing to consider, which we’ve sort of considered before and how we break down those payments, is that if you are going to be retiring in the UK, you haven’t drawn or fully withdrawn your Australian super, it will have to come to you as sort of lump sum or income payments. As Kevin alluded to earlier, there are going to be component parts as to what is tax and what is not subject to tax in the UK on those parts. It’s tax free coming from the Australian super, but the double taxation agreement between the UK and Australia means that the taxing rights are with the country that the individual is resident in. For those who are not close to retirement, we can help with investments within the Australian super. We’ve got licenced advisers in our offices in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney that would be able to manage your fund whilst you’re in the UK and waiting for retirement. One of the points to consider would be where an individual is domiciled. So, I think we’ve got a whole different presentation with regards to that, but it’s very important to consider that because if you’re domiciled in the UK, we have inheritance tax which Australia do not have. So, there are implications for keeping assets in Australia. In that respect it’s best to stay in Australia and take the super as a tax-free lump sum. If you’re in a position to do that. As I said, if you’re moving between the two countries, the UK and Australia, it’s very important that you establish which jurisdiction, during the course of a tax year, that you are going to be tax resident in. Broadly speaking, it’s going to be where you’re living for most of that year, but we have a separate business, bdhTax which can help with these like complicated situations for people who are moving back and forth, back and forth during the course of the tax year. So, the final section is a bit about bdhSterling, so I’m going to hand you back over to Kevin.
Thank you, Paul. Just click on the first slide please. OK, so why bdhSterling? Why come to bdhSterling for advice? Well, we are dual licenced advisers. Myself and Paul and our Australian advisers, we’re pretty qualified in the UK and the Australian advisers are obviously qualified in Australia. We’ve 15 years’ experience in UK pension transfers and we specialise in defined benefit final salary schemes. The advantage that our clients do find is that we have advice under one roof for Australia and the UK. So, we have, as I say, offices in Australia and in the UK, so between us we can give advice on any assets have in Australia, any assets you have in the UK and it’s all under one roof which our clients prefer. We are a financial services company; we offer other aspects of financial advice. Not only Australian super, but general retirement planning / investments. And we have a sister company, bdhTax, who we can offer a specific advice and tax returns too, if needs be.
Thank you, Paul. So, if you’d like to have a chat with myself or Paul or one of our advisers regarding your own specific circumstances, there’s an email address on the on the screen, please send us an email. Just to give us some idea of your age, your board retirement plan and the approximate value of your superannuation scheme would be good to have, and then we’d be more than happy to answer any questions that you have and also give you some advice specific to your own particular circumstances.
Thank you, Paul. Just before we start the Q&A, I’d just like to say on behalf of myself and Paul, thanks very much for joining this afternoon. You will all receive a link to the recording. So, feel free to click on that. You’ll get that in a couple of days and you’ll have access to the slides and any commentary. But I now open up the floor, so to speak, for any questions. I’ll have a look in the in the chat to see if there’s anything currently. You can either use the chat box at the bottom. There is a raise the hand as well, so feel free to answer to put your questions on myself and Paul we’ll run through them.
Question and answer session:
We did have an email this afternoon, one of the delegates came in with an e-mail regarding taxation on Australian superannuation, when you bring it across to the UK, hopefully I’ve covered that off with the slides on the value of advice. But please, if you want any further questions regarding that then please send an email in that’d be fine.
OK, I’ve just got something in our question and answers box. Just saying the chat is showing is disabled, so sorry about that. I’m not quite sure where that is, but you should be able to go into the question-and-answer section on the screen and ask some questions. I do see a couple have dropped in all ready.
You want to go first, Paul?
So that’s let’s have a look at some of them. So, first question, ‘Do you cash in your Australian super as a lump sum into your Australian account, move it over. How does the UK consider that for tax?’ So, in terms of the UK, you would be considered in receipt of that if it’s going into one of your accounts, even if it is in Australia. With Australian Super, because it doesn’t run through any kind of UK tax system – as would a UK pension which goes through the UK PAYE system, you would have to declare it on a tax return. And that’s of course something we can help you with as part of the advice when you obtain that lump sum, bdhSterling can give you advice on where and how you put that on your return for maximum tax efficiency. Going through kind of some of the components that Kevin talked about a little bit earlier in the slides. That’s certainly something we can help and give advice on. But if you’re UK tax resident, it doesn’t really matter what account you pay it into. And quite often people do pay into an Aussie bank account – it’s in Aussie dollars, they move it as and when the exchange rate might benefit and the tax will be assessed in the UK when the tax return is completed.
Thank you, Paul. Another question was, ‘I’m a New Zealand citizen and worked in Australia for approximately 6 years. I now reside in the UK. I’m not at retirement age and given I won’t be moving back to Australia, can I take out my Australian super in a lump sum?’. So that that’s an interesting question. Because if you’re in the UK but you are a New Zealand resident and New Zealand national, living in Australia, you don’t quite get the same rights as a temporary resident would do because of the Trans-Tasman Travel Agreement between the UK and Australia. You wouldn’t be entitled to that DASP (Departing Australian Superannuation Payment), which you can take at any time. And that’s one of the nuances of the Trans-Tasman Agreement between Australia and New Zealand.
Thank you, Paul. Another question, ‘Do you give tax advice in Australia and the UK?’. Yes, we do. If you want specific tax advice, things covered off for your tax return, etc, then our sister company bdhTax will be able to engage you and give you that advice. So, something we can certainly help with, yes. I’m just going down to the next one.
Yeah, essentially the only way to receive your Australian pension tax-free to be resident in Australia at the time. So, this brings us on to an email we had prior to this question-and-answer session. The answer to that is yes. So, if you’re Australian tax resident and you have met the conditions of release or preservation age or age 65 and are still working you can receive your Australian benefits tax-free. Because of the double taxation agreement between the UK and Australia, the taxing rights for whether it be UK pensions or whether it be Australian super, the taxing rights, the taxables are with the country you are tax resident in when you withdraw that. So that’s just kind of the rules between the two countries. I mean, if you were in Australia receiving a super, it’s just it’s just the rules there in Australia which you know is the same can be tax free if you meet conditions of the release. If you’re in the UK and your tax resident, then it’s UK tax rules that apply. But as said earlier in the presentation, there are kind of component parts where you can get some of your benefits, tax free or reduced tax rate.
Thanks, Paul. Next question was, ‘What is the percentage rate of tax for the taxable components?’. That all depends, the tax is charged at your marginal rate. So, if you’re a 20% taxpayer, then you’ll pay 20% tax. If unfortunately, the amount of the withdrawal pushes the taxable component part into a higher rate part, then a part of that withdrawal you may well pay 40%. Part of the withdrawal strategy at bdh that we work to is we would obviously look at what level of withdrawals that you require, but also try and make sure that the withdrawals that you receive don’t push you into a higher rate bracket because as I say, the bottom line is the taxable component, as Paul said, is added on to our income and you’ll pay tax at your at your marginal rates.
Next question, ‘The July 64 age rule?’. There is actually a table on the ATO (Australian Tax Office) website on super which is easy to find that just says what kind of the year you’re born and between what ages where you actually fall and so we can kind of send that link across.
Sorry to interrupt Paul. I’ve got access to that graph in front of me. It’s, ‘I was born in March 1964’.
So, March 1964. Your Preservation age will be 59. So, you can access your, super at age 59 if you’re retired. If you’re still working, then the 65 will come into play. Or obviously if you retire before 65, if you retire at 63 because you’re past the age of 59, then you can get access at 63.
Next question, ‘I know you have a fee for that service. Does that include helping me work through until retirement age around 18 months’ time?’. So, what we can do, is we can provide financial and retirement planning for people. I think during the course of the presentation that Kevin ran through or introduced the concepts of cash flow forecasting, which would include all your income, expenses, income could be coming from employment, later and retirement it be coming from UK pensions and from Australian Super. So, we can take into account all that when setting out a retirement plan and that would include withdrawals from your Aussie super to help A) fund your retirement and B) look at the most tax efficient way of taking that.
Just going to go back to another question.
The question was, ‘I’ve already reached preservation age and intend to fully retire the next 12 to 18 months, drawing down from my super on a monthly income. Do I pay tax on normal HMRC tax scale each year?’. Well, the short answer is yes. I mean it is your marginal rate. So, it is added to your income. One thing I would say on that is, that depending on how regularly you take the withdrawals, it’s taxed slightly differently. So, if you take the withdrawals, well, if you take it monthly, that’s classified as income. If you took withdrawals less frequent, say annually, or half yearly, that’s classified as withdrawals and not income, and there’s a slight difference in how they’re taxed, so it’s always best to get some professional advice to ascertain how best to take them in the most tax efficient way.
Yeah, and just to add to that and again kind of reemphasizing the points already made. There are, although it’s accessible for a tax in the UK, if you withdraw Australian super, as you said before, we can work out there are component parts that are taxable and non-taxable as per the UK legislation. So that it your fund, your Super fund is broken up into several parts, the rules for Australian or any sort of foreign pensions being paid to a UK tax resident were changed in March 2017. But some of those rules were grandfathered over. So, there is an element that built up before that, where you’re entitled to what’s known as Foreign Service Relief. So, there’s a foreign service relief part. There’s a growth part and there’s a tax-free cash part. So, although it comes under UK tax rules, it’s not taxed exactly the same way as it would if you took your benefits from the UK pension.
Thanks, Paul. Next question – ‘Just a throw a curveball in here, we’re in the UK, but we’re looking to set up in Italy accessing our superannuation from there at the relevant time. Do you deal with this scenario or do we need to approach someone else?’ Unfortunately, not. Ideally you would need Italian tax advice on that one. I’m not really sure how Australian super is taxed in Italy and whether there is or isn’t a double taxation agreement between Italy and Australia.
Next question, ‘Our super is bulk of savings as pension. I’m a tax resident in the UK now, am I better off taking the Super pension in UK rather than transferring the lump sum’. That’s quite a tricky question! So, I think the principles to think about if you’re a tax resident in the UK, the taxing rights on both your UK pensions and your super is with the UK. That’s basically it. So, when you’re taking your benefits from a UK pension, they’re taxed as per the UK pension rules. 25% of it will be tax free if you’ve taken that already. And the rest as and when you take it will be accessible for tax at what will be your PAYE level, so you know, your base tax rate. We said before, if you’re taking money from Australian super, again the taxing rights for in the UK, but again there are component parts which need to be worked out as to how much of that is actually going to be taxed. So, I hope that kind of answers that.
The next question, ‘What is the cost of your financial planning services?’ I think the first thing to say is that any initial meetings we have, or an initial consultation or introductory meeting, we don’t actually charge for. From that point on, we kind of assess your situation for financial planning. So, we’ll do introduction meeting, we’ll kind of introduce (which you’ve seen a little glimpse of) the concept of cash flow planning. And then we can like take it from there, depending on kind of what assets you’ve got, what issues you have, what objections you have as to how much we charge I can we can send the details of our of our fees across, but it might be slightly different for different people.
Next question, ‘Do you see the current arrangements changing as a result in the UK – Aus Free Trade agreement?’. Well that that that’s a difficult one to answer because the freedom of movement between the UK and Australia has been very good over the years even without kind of the trade agreement being in place. Whether it will mean that some of the rules, some of the ideas might change as a result of that sort of close relationship, I couldn’t possibly say. One of the fundamental differences from a pension perspective is if you’ve got a UK pension and you move to Australia, although there’s a couple of hoops to jump through, it is possible to transfer the benefits within the UK pension to an Australian super. At the moment you cannot transfer Australian supers out of Australia. There are a couple of exceptions I think to maybe New Zealand supers, but generally speaking you can’t do that. Whether that will change in the future, I can only speculate on. But that might be something, but there’s nothing really firm or discussed about that at this moment in time.
Thanks, Paul. I’ll take the next question, which is, ‘If you cash your super into an Australian account, are you taxed in the UK at that time? If so, best to wait to the exchange rate?’. As soon the superannuation provider releases the withdrawal into your Australian bank account from HMRC. That’s when the withdrawal is made, regardless of the exchange rates. So, you’ll put that amount or some of that amount, the taxable amount, on your UK self-assessment tax return. Now obviously you will put on there the date you received the withdrawal and the currency exchange rate on that date. So, you are tied, you’ve got a bit of leeway cause it’s per tax year. But as I say, as soon as it gets withdrawn, then it’s classified as a withdrawal paid to you.
It is interesting though that there are, as we spoke before again. So again, there are component parts of your Pension, and of the value and when it’s paid out, the component parts are taxable and non-taxable, but part of non-taxable amount will be the value up until March 2017 and then we have to kind of establish a what the exchange rate was at the time there as well, and look at the difference. So, exchange rate does take does pay an important part in the calculations and that’s something we take into consideration when we’re looking at the withdrawals.
Q, ‘Please clarify, moving my Aussie super into lump sum. Am I subject to UK tax even though I pay tax on the Super in Aus already when contributing?’. The short answer is yes, you are. You pay tax as it goes in on the accumulation stage of the superannuation in Australia. That’s the reason because it’s tax free when it comes out. Unfortunately, if you’re a UK resident when you retire, HMRC will still tax you on a proportion as overseas income. Yeah, and that’s absolutely right. Kevin has said the key thing is the taxing rights on an individual pension’s is where that individual is actually tax resident at the time. If someone was going, as we spoke earlier about people moving between one country or the other, if an individual was to transfer their UK pension to an Aussie super, they’d be in a much better position because they’d be getting tax relief from the way in, when they pay into the UK pension, tax-free growth within the UK pension and if they’re looking to retire in Australia, they could potentially transfer their pension over into an Australian super, providing meet certain conditions and take their benefits out tax-free. Unfortunately, in the other direction it doesn’t work so favourably from a tax position.
Next question, ‘I’m currently a UK citizen. If I move back to Australia and take my super to lump sum there, how long do I have to remain be an Australian resident before I’ll bring it back to the UK tax free?’. That’s a very good question, if you move back to Australia and are classified as an Australian resident. Then you can take your withdrawal tax-free. If you return to the UK within five tax years. Well, this is an important point actually, because if you’ve been contributing to an Australian super, you can take your benefits tax free from that Scheme if you move back to Australia and withdraw all of those benefits. Now, I think earlier in in the presentation, Kevin mentioned a slightly different rule for QROPS, or if someone had transferred their UK benefits into an Australian superannuation scheme. So, it depends on how those benefits were built up. If it’s built up purely with contributions going in from your time you were resident in Australia, you can take all your benefits out, providing your meeting preservation age and the conditions release when your tax resident in Australia and you can come back to the UK, there’s no tax consequences. However, if that Australian Super had a UK pension transferred into it first, there’s slightly different rules surrounding that, so it’s very important to establish how that fund was built up and was it built up with any UK pension transfers in.
Just looking down the list of questions, some of the questions I noticed that people have asked at a later stage, they’re very similar to some of the questions we’ve already answered. So, rather than avoid repeating ourselves, if you’ve asked one of those questions you probably find that hopefully we’ve answered some of those already.
‘Are you saying that one of the taxable, tax-free, components of Australia’s super is not taxed in the UK?’. That is correct. As Paul alluded to, there’s predominantly 3 components: Foreign Service Relief, tax-free component, and the taxable component. The taxable component is taxed in in the UK. The other two components, depending on the Foreign Service relief being applicable to you, both those components will be tax-free in the UK. So not all of it is taxed, just certain components.
OK, so, ‘What happens if you retire, claim you’re super and then one year later get another job?’. That’s an interesting question. If you’re between 60 and 65, if you’ve actually retired at that point and you take your benefits, that’s fine if you if you go back to work.
So, the next one I’ve got is a different one. ‘Will income payments just be bank transferred from Aus super to the UK Bank account?’. The short answer is yes, it might be possible to transfer it via a currency exchange broker depending on the rules of the super scheme. I mean, some of them are actually quite draconian to be honest and a lot of them don’t even cater for the fact that you could actually transfer into an international – i.e., a UK bank account. But the short answer is it can be transferred from an Aus super to a bank account depending on the rules of the scheme, it could be a UK bank account. Most likely, if that UK bank account can accept payments in Australian dollars. So, there’s two things to think about. One, the bank accepting payments in Australian dollars. Two if it is paid directly into UK bank account, what is the exchange rate at the time? Do you want it transferred directly in there and converted at bank rates, which often, just like tourist rates at that time. So, a couple of things to consider there. The short answer is yes, it can be paid directly to a bank.
Just going through the questions of as I’ve alluded to, there’s a couple that we bypassed that we’ve already answered on a previous question, which is very similar.
I think the point to add to that as well though, Kevin, is if you don’t think it’s properly covered, we gave out the enquiries@bdhSterling.com email address. You can drop us a question there as well after the presentation.
‘I’ve a private super in Australia, but nothing in the UK. Am I better off paying more into my AUS super or starting a UK private pension?’. If you’re going to remain in the UK and retire and live the rest of your life here in the UK, it’s more advantageous from a tax perspective to start a UK private pension. The reason for that is that you’ll get tax relief on the Contributions and then when you come to withdraw the UK pension at retirement, part of the fund is tax-free and part of is going to be taxable. If you make contribution into your Australian super, whilst being a UK resident, and have no plans to emigrate back to Australia, there’s no tax advantages for you. And anything that you contribute now ultimately will be taxable in the UK. So, I hope that answers your question, but just to summarise from a tax perspective and the tax relief you would attract, you’re in a better position to start at a UK pension whilst being a UK resident.
OK, so I think we’re going wrap up. I’m just going to do a couple more questions now. One question is, ‘With my existing Australian super, how can I calculate the taxable / non-taxable component?’. Well that really is part of the advice that we provide – we’ve received tax advice and tax opinion on this and we’re quite comfortable that we’re able to do those calculations for you and also help you present that on your tax return.
And one last question, ‘As Kevin mentioned five years, is that only for a UK pension transferred component?’ So, five years. If you move back to the UK, having withdrawn from your Australian super, had that Australian super had a transfer in from a UK pension, but otherwise we’ve just built up with Australian employee contributions and that’s how the Super was built up. No UK pension transfers in. You don’t really have to worry about the five years.
And finally, ‘What is Foreign Service Relief?’. This again, that’s the part that may qualify for more favourable tax treatment that was built up before April 2017. As a result of a rule change by HMRC on how foreign pensions are taxed in the UK.
So, I think we’ve covered pretty much all the questions. Apologies if we haven’t got around to answering every single one, but there were a lot of questions and what I would like to say is thank you for all those questions. Because we pretty much want these types of webinars to be interactive. We do want people to start thinking about some of the implications that are pertinent to them when it comes to this type of thing. So, thank you very much for attending. We’ve got a really good, really good attendance on this today and just about everyone stayed to the end through the question-and-answer session. I hope you’ve all found this really helpful. And as Kevin said before that these slides will be available to you. So, thank you very much for joining us. If you’ve got any further questions, say enquiries@bdhSterling.com. And as I say, thank you very much for your time today. Have a good evening. Thank you very much.