AWD Chase de Vere calls for 100% pensions relief

This is from the same company that were fined £1m for pension misselling?

It will get them in the paper though.

Hmmmmm

Wealthy people will always find a way to provide for their retirement. If we want lower and middle earners to make contributions out of their hard-pressed budgets we need to do three things:

1. Allow 40% tax relief on contributions up to £3,000pa

2. Allow 20% tax relief on any other contribution up to £50,000 of income

3. Completely break the link with means tested benefits in retirement

David Etches is right - pensions are a tax planning tool for the wealthy otherwise who in their right mind would give their accumulated capital to an insurance company for a totally unpredictable return?

By all means encourage/support the less well off with breaks. But why make it so complicated and open to governmental meddling?

In my view the fairest way to cope with this long term issue would be to remove all relief beyond a modest level (£3000 say), retain the tax free investment period and offer a level of income in retirement that is tax free to a level of income that reflects cost of living at the time. This would be a simple system to manage through relief/compulsion, etc.

If introduced now the government would have an immediate large increase in revenues - it could even consider paying off some debt - what about War Loan??

It is in retirement that the best return is most needed.

Such a move would smack of desperation on the part of the government. Hey ~ get 100% tax relief on money you put into something you don't want. I don't think so.

There are many other quite straightforward measures the government can and should take to make pensions more attractive to savers, much of it merely undoing the damage done by Crash Gordon's lot and giving us GENUINE simplification, not to mention introducing a vastly simplified alternative to the Annuity Trap and all these complicated third way retirement income products.

As for lack of trust in the industry, one has to wonder how much of this has been engendered by the PIA/FSA hindsight review using assumptions for preserved final salary scheme entitlements which may very well have not panned out at all, not least each year's RPI linked increases. When was the last time RPI was running at 5% p.a. or anywhere near it?

And how many of those final salary schemes (into which many transferees may have been bought back) have since gone bust in a state of deficit?

The FSA has a lot to answer for. The trouble is ~ it never does.

A lecture from Chase de Vere about the public's mistrust of the pensions industry?

This must surely qualify for for the New Model Adviser Chutzpah award.

It looks as if the article has led commentators down the wrong path and it looks as if commentators are not concentrating.

100% relief on a £5,000 contribution is peanuts. Most 40% taxpayers (or 50% taxpayers) put in many times this amount.

What I think this refers to is 100% tax relief on the INCOME.

That would be an incentive indeed to the lower earner.

Is this another example of the journalist not really understanding what he is writing about? If so he needn't really feel ashamed as the advisers commenting also seem to have missed the point.

And why reduce the limit on pensions at all? Far better to encourage those who can save to do so. The quid pro quo would be to reduce or even cancel the state pension for those whose pension income is above (say) £50,000