By Fiona Tait, Business Development Manager, Scottish Life

The main result for the pension industry of the Chancellor’s 2012 Budget statement is, thankfully, business as usual. In the run up to George Osborne’s speech the usual concerns that higher rate tax relief might be removed were given considerable impetus by Danny Alexander , but were in the event specifically ruled out .

Private pensions
The future of private pension planning in the UK will be dominated by automatic enrolment and the knock-on effect for existing pension savings. One of the strongest arguments against a change to the tax rules for pensions was that it might have a detrimental effect on the number of employees who choose to opt out of their employer’s scheme. This would be politically damaging to the government and, even worse, detrimental to the lifestyle and income of those individuals in retirement.

There will of course be implications for automatic enrolment as a result of this Budget, following confirmation by the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) that the qualifying and band earnings thresholds will be linked, at least initially, to the Personal Allowance (PA) and upper and lower National Insurance (NI) contribution limits respectively .
The increase in the ...Read More