Moving pension lump sum abroad

[TRS30]

I have a paid up pension lump sum from a company I use to work for.

In light of the new pension levy is it possible to move this abroad to avoid this tax?

 

[Brendan Burgess]

You should be very wary of doing this even if it is possible.

There have been scams in the UK where people were offered means of accessing their pension pots tax-free. They ended up losing almost all their funds in expenses.

I think you should just live with the levy.

Brendan

 

[TRS30]

You should be very wary of doing this even if it is possible.

There have been scams in the UK where people were offered means of accessing their pension pots tax-free. They ended up losing almost all their funds in expenses.

I think you should just live with the levy.

Brendan

Thanks Brendan.

I probably should have clarified that I'm not looking to access the money now or evade any tax due in the future this money would remain for retirement.

 

[Jim2007]

I have a paid up pension lump sum from a company I use to work for.

In light of the new pension levy is it possible to move this abroad to avoid this tax?

If you move to another EU/EEA country to work, then it is possible to move your pension contributions to a fund in that country, under certain conditions. That is the only fully above board method of moving your funds!

Anything else is either a scam of some type or so expensive that you will end up loosing a large part of your capital.

 

[Conan]

It is a Revenue requirement that if you want to transfer your fund overseas that it must be "bona fide", I.e. You must have moved overseas and be working there. There are one or two people advertising locally about moving funds to Malta etc and alleging that you can then access the money early. But as others here have said, this is not as it appears.

 

[TRS30]

Thanks for the responses.

Looks like I'll just have to bare the theft of my pension to ensure those in defined benefit schemes get what they are entitled to.

 

[ashambles]

Even if you emigrate Revenue are involved in case by case decisions to allow an individual's pension funds to move.

While it's outside the EU, I know people who moved to the US to work and are so far are coming up against a brick wall in attempting to move their Irish pension funds into their new US style 401k pensions.

Revenue were saying that their 401k wasn't equivalent to an Irish pension, which wasn't a point blank refusal so it sounded like it should be possible to move the funds in theory but it was being denied in practice as revenue have a catch all excuse to say no.

There may be a particular problem with the US as it does allow people to have more access to funds but somehow it wouldn't surprise me if even for perfectly straightforward transfers within the EU that Revenue might be currently raising similar issues.

 

[Jim2007]

There may be a particular problem with the US as it does allow people to have more access to funds but somehow it wouldn't surprise me if even for perfectly straightforward transfers within the EU that Revenue might be currently raising similar issues.

An EU directive always trumps the Irish revenue!

However you can only move what is referred to as a second pillar pension and even then there are complex rules about what can be transferred and what the receiving fund have to accept. There are usually mismatches which result in some of the pension being not transferrable.