Pensions vs. other forms of investment

‘You may also take tax free (in the case of DC / DB schemes) or 20% tax advantaged (in the case of DC schemes only) lump sums.’

If referring to excess lump sum, I thought it also applied to DB.

For example, final salary 140k
X 1.5 = 210k
200k tax free. 10k taxed at 20%.
Assuming no other lump sums taken.

Am I wrong ?

Thanks for the work you’re putting into this post and discussion.
 
Again, this really is not a complicated issue.

Pensions are by far and away the most tax-efficient way to save for retirement - right up to the standard fund threshold.
I appreciate this seems clear to you Sarenco but I don't think the point Ilgon and I are trying to make is coming across clearly. I'll have a think about this and do another post in a few days – it's obviously an important issue.
Am I wrong ?

Thanks for the work you’re putting into this post and discussion.
As far as I know, yes. If you belong to a DB scheme only, the only lump sum you get is the tax free lump sum. You don't have the option of taking any lump sum at 20%.
 
I’ve no idea what other point you are trying to make now but frankly it comes across as sour grapes.

No sour grapes here. My pension strategy is to ensure I have made provision to maximise my tax free lump sum and provide enough pension income in retirement to bring me past the marginal tax rate. After that I see little advantage investing within a pension and prefer the flexibility and returns investing elsewhere provides.

I am comfortable with this strategy but am very open to change if I see reason to. I was happy to see Ent's thread on the issue and have read all the posts and contributed. Nothing so far has convinced me to change but I will read on with interest.
 
DB scheme 1.5 times final salary. If final salary 150k, lump sum equals 225k. 200k tax free and 25k at 20% tax I understood.
 
DB scheme 1.5 times final salary. If final salary 150k, lump sum equals 225k. 200k tax free and 25k at 20% tax I understood.
I don't think this is right. My understanding is that, once you've joined a defined benefit scheme your max pension benefits are capped at the salary / periods of service rules set out for DB pensions (subject also to the €2.15 million max). See Chapter 7 of the revenue pensions manual here: https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/pensions/chapter-07.pdf As long as you're a member of the DB scheme, additional investments in your pension may be made by way of AVC or PRSA-AVC only, and these are subject to AVC funding limits.

If you have a DC pension in addition to a DB scheme from previous employment you could take €200,000 tax free lump sum from the DB and then claim a tax advantaged lump sum from the DC pension. That's the way it works I think.
 
You're not wrong.
 
I get that.

But your strategy is plain wrong.

Because you are focusing on the wrong thing - the marginal tax rate paid on a small sliver of your drawdown.
Nothing so far has convinced me to change.
Yup, that’s clear.
 
The pension lump sum is defined as an amount based on your salary and length of service, or alternatively as 25% of the value of your fund. There is no other limit to the pension lump sum. Of that pensions lump sum, 200k is tax free, the next 300knis taxed at 20%, and a thing over 500k is taxed as income under PAYE.
 
It still makes sense to grow one’s pension beyond the point at which the one will pay marginal rate income tax.

It’s a low enough level anyway, with the State Pension at €14,500, so only €27,500, which equates to an ARF of €687k.

The point which analysis such as yours misses is the investment growth on the 40% subvention from the State, i.e. tax relief.
 
No, this is not correct.
 
No, this is not correct.
This is not the case for defined benefit pensions, to my understanding, but @Conan may be able to correct.

Edit: and sorry I meant by max pension benefits being capped I meant for the purposes of investments under the scheme.

Edit 2: Happy to be proven wrong on this one btw ! More money in retirement .....
 
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Thanks for the contributions everyone, makes for interesting reading.


Ent319, you bring up some interesting points. In the extract I have taken above and from my understanding of DB schemes I think you are misinformed on 2 points but perhaps another more knowledgeable poster than me might corroborate or debunk my thoughts.

  1. It is my understanding that as part of a DB scheme there are no caps to the tax free lump sum. Your wage determines it. Whether that is 200k or 250k or 140k etc.
  2. You made a point of utilising AVC to bum up the tax free lump sum. I do not believe this is possible. Again, it is only your wage that can be used. You would need to convert your AVC into an ARF and then draw it down.
My thinking on the above could be incorrect because it could be the case that your particular scheme rules allow for it.
 
NP thanks for the input.

Re: 1 – My understanding is that the limits on lump sums from DB schemes is generally 3/80 of remunerations per year in the scheme unless the person has less potential for service up to NRA. See Chapter 6 of revenue pensions manual: https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/pensions/chapter-06.pdf

You can also accrue additional pension benefits after normal retirement age: https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/pensions/chapter-08.pdf, which would allow you to breach the 120/80 cap if you've more than 40 years service.

The table from Chapter 7 of the Pensions manual will set the max for lump sum benefits (https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/pensions/chapter-07.pdf) if you have shorter service to your NRA in which case there's a hard cap of 120/80 on lump sum from your DB scheme.

The tax free portion of a lump sum is subject to a hard cap across all pensions of €200,000; see Chapter 27 of the pensions manual: https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/pensions/chapter-27.pdf

This Chapter would also appear to suggest I was incorrect about Lump Sums on DB schemes exceeding €200,000 and not being subject to tax at 20% (see attached link to Form 790AA – https://www.revenue.ie/en/personal-tax-credits-reliefs-and-exemptions/documents/form-790aa.pdf).

Re: 2 – My understanding is that you cannot use an AVC to give yourself more lump sum on a DB scheme than you otherwise would have been entitled to take under revenue's general rules, but if your lump sum from the scheme, for whatever reason, is less than what's allowed under revenue rules (maybe your pension has a career average element), then you can use your AVC to top it up to what you're entitled to take. There's also nothing stopping you from taking a load of money out of your pension as a taxable cash at your marginal rate if there's a funded component.

If it's desirable to explore the above quite granular points further it may be helpful to start another thread. Still having a think about some of the previous discussion here and will post again in a few days with thoughts.
 
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I just read through all of this thread and it seems that some of the disagreement is the result of some posters being at cross purposes with one another. Some are comparing the tax relief on pension contributions with the blended tax rate due at pension drawdown; and others are comparing the tax relief on contributions with the marginal rate at drawdown.

It is the 2nd of these two points that interests me as I think my lump sum might (just) exceed €200k and my income in retirement could exceed the standard rate cut off point. So I was wondering if I should continue my pension contributions at the current level.

So I did some figures to look at what my return would be if I put an additional €1,000 into my pension and then retired and withdrew the resulting amount 1-16 years later. I have assumed an almost worst case scenario where the additional increase in the lump sum is subject to 20% tax and the additional income from the ARF is subject to 52% tax.

The results are in the table below. The combined effect of the 52% & 20% tax rates slightly overpower the 40% tax relief so you need fund growth for this to make sense. But if your investment term is reasonably long, then it is worth it.

YearGrowthInvestedBase Capital (A)Tax Relief (B)Lump SumTax on Lump SumRemainderMarginal Tax RateTaxReturn
0​
6%​
€ 1,000€ 600€ 400
1​
6%​
€ 1,060€ 265
20%​
€ 795
52%​
€ 466€ 593.60
2​
6%​
€ 1,124€ 281
20%​
€ 843
52%​
€ 494€ 629.22
3​
6%​
€ 1,191€ 298
20%​
€ 893
52%​
€ 524€ 666.97
4​
6%​
€ 1,262€ 316
20%​
€ 947
52%​
€ 555€ 706.99
5​
6%​
€ 1,338€ 335
20%​
€ 1,004
52%​
€ 589€ 749.41
6​
6%​
€ 1,419€ 355
20%​
€ 1,064
52%​
€ 624€ 794.37
7​
6%​
€ 1,504€ 376
20%​
€ 1,128
52%​
€ 662€ 842.03
8​
6%​
€ 1,594€ 398
20%​
€ 1,195
52%​
€ 701€ 892.55
9​
6%​
€ 1,689€ 422
20%​
€ 1,267
52%​
€ 743€ 946.11
10​
6%​
€ 1,791€ 448
20%​
€ 1,343
52%​
€ 788€ 1,002.87
11​
6%​
€ 1,898€ 475
20%​
€ 1,424
52%​
€ 835€ 1,063.05
12​
6%​
€ 2,012€ 503
20%​
€ 1,509
52%​
€ 885€ 1,126.83
13​
6%​
€ 2,133€ 533
20%​
€ 1,600
52%​
€ 938€ 1,194.44
14​
6%​
€ 2,261€ 565
20%​
€ 1,696
52%​
€ 995€ 1,266.11
15​
6%​
€ 2,397€ 599
20%​
€ 1,797
52%​
€ 1,054€ 1,342.07
16​
6%​
€ 2,540€ 635
20%​
€ 1,905
52%​
€ 1,118€ 1,422.60


So then I compared this with putting €600 (which was the net cost to me of the above pension contribution) into an ETF. This is based on paying 41% tax just on the gains and cashing in part of the investment to pay the deemed disposal at year 8. The results are in the table below and in summary, the return is not as good as the option above.


YearGrowthInvestedGainExit Tax RateExit TaxETF Return
0​
6%​
€ 600
1​
6%​
€ 636€ 36
41.0%​
€ 15€ 621
2​
6%​
€ 674€ 74
41%​
€ 30€ 644
3​
6%​
€ 715€ 115
41%​
€ 47€ 668
4​
6%​
€ 757€ 157
41%​
€ 65€ 693
5​
6%​
€ 803€ 203
41%​
€ 83€ 720
6​
6%​
€ 851€ 251
41%​
€ 103€ 748
7​
6%​
€ 902€ 302
41%​
€ 124€ 778
8​
6%​
€ 956€ 356
41%​
€ 146€ 810
9​
6%​
€ 859€ -
41%​
€ -€ 859
10​
6%​
€ 910€ 52
41%​
€ 21€ 889
11​
6%​
€ 965€ 106
41%​
€ 44€ 921
12​
6%​
€ 1,023€ 164
41%​
€ 67€ 956
13​
6%​
€ 1,084€ 225
41%​
€ 92€ 992
14​
6%​
€ 1,149€ 290
41%​
€ 119€ 1,030
15​
6%​
€ 1,218€ 359
41%​
€ 147€ 1,071
16​
6%​
€ 1,291€ 433
41%​
€ 177€ 1,114
(Note the table above was edited to correct an error from the original post.)


I know that some people would prefer to use direct investment in shares as the comparator and there is lots of discussion on AAM already about the relative merits of shares vs ETFs. I just used ETFs as that is what I am more familiar with.

I put this together pretty quickly so I'd appreciate if anyone could point out any errors or omissions. But my initial conclusion is that increasing your pension contributions compares favourably with putting the same money into an ETF, even where you expect to pay 20% tax on the resulting increased lump sum and 52% tax on the resulting increased income (provided you get 40% tax relief on your contributions).

There are quite a few variables here such as the assumed investment growth (but this impacts both options equally); and the assumed tax rate on the lump sum and the pension income (but both of these are quite pessimistic in my scenario above). For this reason, changing the variables would in most cases push the pension option further ahead.
 
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OK 3CC your post has inspired me.

OK, so reading through all the comments in the thread again:
  1. No-one has argued that the rate of tax relief you receive on your contributions should be determinative of whether you do or do not invest in a pension;
  2. Everyone would seem to agree that the fact the additional money you receive to invest in a pension comes from tax relief (referred to as value “B” in the OP) is mostly irrelevant. The net issue is that it’s more money to invest with your capital (referred to as value “A” in the OP), all of which then becomes subject to the pension taxation regime.
  3. No-one seems to disagree with the general way things have been conceptualised in the OP (subject to amendments / additions that were made to reflect comments).
  4. People also emphasised the other benefits of pensions in different places (e.g. availing of tax credits again).
Bearing in mind this thread was to explore whether investing in their pension was beneficial vs. something else, I did a bit of thinking about the significance of the headline rate of tax on a pension and its relevance to your decision to invest or not.

As discussed in the OP, pensions get to compound continually without being taxed until any portion is drawn down. You also get the benefit of investing more money than any other investment with a pension (the value of A and B).

Investing in an ARF allows you to continue to generate wealth from your pension in retirement. I’m ignoring the annuity option for this thread because it’s mainly focused on wealth creation.

When you retire tax is only ever payable on the portion of the pension you draw down. You can continue to generate wealth from the rest of the value of your pension without paying tax on it.

A simple way to conceptualise this is to imagine you had an ARF worth €1 million, received 40% tax relief on all your contributions and all matters relating to lump sums had been dealt with / sorted:
  • €600,000 of the AVC would derive from your original capital (A)
  • €400,000 of the AVC would derive from your tax relief (B)
So long as you’ve got money in the pension pot, you’re still generating wealth from B in retirement. You also had the benefit of generating wealth from B when your pension was accumulating in the years before you retired.

So if we go back to the issue of the Headline Rate of Tax, this is only ever paid on an even smaller amount of the small amount you draw down from the pension e.g. a portion of the 4% of imputed distribution from the ARF, assuming you’re not taking out large amounts of cash at your marginal rate.

The other 96% of your ARF (60% from A, 40% from B) would continue to generate wealth tax free, potentially in excess of what was distributed each year.

So my conclusion is that so long as your pension is in a position to continually generate wealth in excess of what is taken from it, the headline rate of tax you might pay on a small portion of it is a red herring, because it only applies to a miniscule portion of the overall pot, and it has to be seen in the context of the overall value of portion B to generate wealth.

Even if you were receiving only 20% tax relief and were paying the marginal rate of tax in retirement, it would seem to still make sense to contribute to your pension if you never planned to draw it all down because the money received from tax relief is money that you can continue to generate wealth from for potentially the next 50/60 years.

@3CC – does this impact your thinking / sums ?

I'm currently at home with a fever so I may be delirious / have missed something big here.
 
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The results are in the table below. The combined effect of the 52% & 20% tax rates slightly overpower the 40% tax relief so you need fund growth for this to make sense. But if your investment term is reasonably long, then it is worth it.
But you will be drawing down the majority of your pension after 66 at which point you won't pay PRSI and after 70 you will probably have lower USC as well.

Anyway I have yet to see a good reason to see why an Irish-resident individual with a steady income should favour investments in financial products outside of a pension. The tax treatment is just too harsh.


I think a lot of people spend too much time on UK and US financial forums where the arithmetic is very different because of the tax treatment.
 
Anyway I have yet to see a good reason to see why an Irish-resident individual with a steady income should favour investments in financial products outside of a pension. The tax treatment is just too harsh.
The only time would be if you have maxed out the relief percentage (based on the age) so need it to go some where else more productive.
 
But you will be drawing down the majority of your pension after 66 at which point you won't pay PRSI and after 70 you will probably have lower USC as well.

Yes - for most people that's true - but I was deliberately using an almost worst case scenario. And even in this scenario, pension contributions stack up well against ETFs. If you expect to pay less PRSI / USC, then the case for the pension is even stronger for you.

I have assumed an almost worst case scenario where the additional increase in the lump sum is subject to 20% tax and the additional income from the ARF is subject to 52% tax.

I have to admit that I was influenced by my own situation where I plan to retire early and significant portion of my pension will deplete before I reach 66.