If you are no longer residing in the UK but are claiming a UK pension, there are multiple benefits of having an overseas pension. A QROPS pension gives these residents the opportunity to transfer and invest the pension abroad. The main benefit of this, of course, is that there are significant tax breaks, depending on the country where you choose to invest it. Your country of residency will determine how much tax you have to pay on your income, but you will not have to pay capital gains tax on your QROPS pension, nor are you likely to pay inheritance tax. This latter can be from 35% to as high as 82% in the UK, so the benefits are easy to see.
Passing on your wealth is also much easier with these offshore pensions. The lack of inheritance tax, plus not having to purchase annuity at the age of 75 gives you a greater amount of money to invest and pass on, and this process is much simpler. The choice of investment options open to you is much greater also, particularly if you have a pension value of over £100,000.
Another major benefit of having an offshore pension is that you can take your income and benefits in whichever currency you choose. So you won’t have to draw your pension in GBP and then pay expensive banking charges to get it changed into the currency of the country where you are living. Plus, you won’t lose out on currency fluctuations affecting how much you draw.
Bio:
This guest blog post is written by Webmaster of whichoffshore.com, offering QROPS pension and offshore pensions services!
