Which plans are affected?
The plans affected are
Self Invested Personal Pension, Personal Pension One, Personal Pension Plan, Free Standing Additional Voluntary Contribution, Personal Pension Flex, Stakeholder, Flexible Pension Plan and James Hay Self Invested Personal Pension.

Customers making payments into a personal pension will lose 2% tax relief on personal payments into their individual pension plans. For example, a client who is currently paying a gross payment of £100 will have his personal payment of £78 (with £22 basic-rate tax relief added) increased to £80 (with £20 basic-rate tax relief added), with the option of opting out of this increase.

What will we issue to your client?
Early next year we will be writing to anyone who is currently making regular payments to a Standard Life pension plan to inform them of the changes we will be making and how this will affect their payments. Look out for information and copies of this mailing closer to the time in Pensions News.

Is there anything else you should consider?
Some clients may wish to take advantage of this “extra 2%” prior to the change by paying in a single payment or increasing their regular payments in the current tax year.

This may also have an impact on clients' net payments received from annuities and income drawdown.

Click the links below for further articles:
How to be a winner after the changes - a case study to show how clients can take full advantage of the changes
Group Pension plans - view the letter being issued to schemes, and find out about the opportunities for advisers
askTECH - answering technical queries about the basic-rate tax change

Tax and legislation are liable to change. This information is based on Standard Life's current understanding of law and HM Revenue & Customs practice. Tax rates and reliefs may be altered. The value of tax reliefs to the investor depends on their financial circumstances. No guarantees are given regarding the effectiveness of any arrangements entered into on the basis of these comments.

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