Don’t use a pension to save for retirement, do this instead

woman is checking her finances at home
woman is checking her finances at home

Governments of all hues have for a long time seen pension savings as theirs to command and control.

We had the much-hated lifetime allowance, which although now gone, has been replaced by a lump sum limit (which restricts the tax-free lump sum to just over £250,000). We also have a death benefit allowance, which limits the amount payable tax-free in the event of early death to the same level as the old lifetime allowance – about £1m.

We have had limits imposed on pension contributions’ relief (now £60,000 per year), and much earlier we had the abolition of advance corporation tax by Gordon Brown in 1999, removing income tax relief for pensioners investing in UK companies.

Why does the Government feel willing and able, often retrospectively from the point of view of pension savers, to fiddle with our pensions?

It is because pension contributions are sheltered from both tax and National Insurance (NI), and hence the Government regards this money as not having crossed the magic divide between “ours” (potentially the Government’s) and “theirs” (the people’s).

With this moral shield, the Government has felt entitled to adjust, limit and otherwise alter the rules under which the tax they feel is owed to them is paid.

The historical (and strong) argument in favour of using the tax benefits given to pensions was that higher-paid workers typically received tax relief at their highest marginal rate on their contributions, but only paid tax at lower rates once they retired.

However, the attraction of this feature is fading, not only because of the now tight limits on pension contribution relief, but also with the likelihood that with frozen thresholds, many pension savers will be paying 40pc or more tax on their pensions.

But for many keen and wealthier savers, the lifetime allowance was the last straw – to limit the size of the pot to a level equivalent to a pension only slightly higher than average earnings (which is what £1m would buy as an index-linked annuity) – was as unwelcome as it was unexpected.

And in a great irony, the catalyst for the lifetime allowance’s abolition was the brain drain of senior doctors seeking early retirement, as their generous public sector pensions broke the lifetime allowance limits, leading them to receive unexpected tax demands for tens (and sometimes into the hundreds) of thousands of pounds.

The final complicating factor for pension savers was that pension funds, once established, could not be withdrawn or liquidated without impossibly high tax charges, penalties and professional fees. So the Government had a large captive pot of money, easy to find and access, into which it could dip its greedy fingers almost at will.

Given the historical propensity of governments to act this way, and given all the noise from the Labour Government about the need for more revenue without altering tax rates for ordinary “working people”, pension savers look to be in for another round of expropriation or further limitations in the next Budget and beyond.

The Government is even quite keen, it seems, to start “encouraging” (i.e. ordering) pension funds to invest in projects it deems desirable, like green infrastructure, for example, irrespective of the financial merits that professional investors view them with.

Is there a solution for younger savers thinking about funding their long-distant retirements? I think there is. Individual Savings Accounts (Isas) have proved not only very popular, but also largely immune from government interference.

The structural reason is clear – a saver who invests their earnings in an Isa will already have paid income tax and NI on the money he or she is investing, and hence the Government has no more claim on it.

Isas are also voluntary, and do not come attached with any long-term commitments, so if governments stick their fingers in in a way which investors do not like, they will simply take their money and do something else with it.

It is somewhat akin to the behaviour of government when dealing with its own savers, for example in relation to National Savings and Investments (NS&I). Here the Government behaves well; it does not retrospectively tax savers, or retrospectively put limits on savings amounts, and this is because saving with NS&I is voluntary.

Upset the saver, and they are off elsewhere. Incentives matter everywhere, not least in government behaviour.

Isas now allow each individual to save up to £20,000 every year tax-free and Isa investment is extremely flexible. Their great selling point is that all income and all capital gains from these investments are completely free of income and capital gains tax.

Not only does this put them on an investment par with pension tax treatment, it saves investors even having to report them on their tax returns.

Once inside an Isa “wrapper”, there are no limits on the size of dividends, interest or capital gains that receive tax relief.

Investments can be chosen and controlled by the saver themselves, or delegated to a professional investment manager. Isas also have highly flexible withdrawal rules – essentially that you can take your money out at any time without penalty.

This latter feature, which makes Isas popular with savers and largely immune from government interference, is nevertheless a potential downside when investing for a pension. This is because pension saving needs to be consistent, and largely without early withdrawals to give individuals enough money to live comfortably in retirement.

So the diligent Isa investor will have to develop a high degree of self-control to resist taking bits and pieces (for say a new car or a holiday) out of what could become a very large fund.

But this flexibility also gives an advantage to Isas over pensions. While pension saving is almost always opaque and confusing in its complexity, Isa saving is simple and allows young people to get to grips with investing first-hand.

Such practical lessons are likely to be valuable later on in life, giving Isa investors the potential for better investment and financial understanding, not just immunity from government interference.

Is the early-withdrawal risk sufficient to make Isas unsuitable for pension saving? In my opinion, no. The evidence over the years shows that governments cannot be trusted to protect pension savers’ hard-earned funds, and I think this nibbling-away at pension funds’ money and investment limits will continue.

With this evidence to hand, I now advise young people who ask my advice about pensions to forget them, and invest as much as they possibly can in Isas.

Neil Record is a former Bank of England economist and author of ‘Sir Humphrey’s Legacy’.