From what I read here, the €200,000 is a red herring. Your ex-gratia payment was <€17,000 and your lump sum from the pension scheme was not likely to be anywhere near €200,000 either. So the €200,000 figure is irrelevant to you.
Would you have been better off getting some of your pension fund as a tax-free lump sum at retirement and paying the tax on the redundancy in 2015? Impossible to tell without knowing all the figures.
What can you do about it?
Even if you got someone to calculate that your pension lump sum was greater than the ex-gratia payment, you'd still have to make the case that you were misled in 2015. The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman can't help you as he only looks into complaints against regulated financial services firms. It looks like your complaint is against a solicitor.
You saved €1,600 in tax at the time. You might have saved a bit more in tax if you hadn't signed the waiver. But I honestly don't think that the amounts involved would make it worth your while pursuing an action against the solicitor.
The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman can't help you as he only looks into complaints against regulated financial services firms.
Sorry, but this makes no sense. The maximum tax-free redundancy payment (including the present value of any future pension lump sum) is €200k. But nowhere do you suggest that you were being offered a redundancy payment of €200k. If your redundancy payment was €17k, then the €200k is irrelevant.I don’t understand that why everyone is mixing the lifetime exemption limit of €200K for ex-gratia payment with the pension lump sum of €200K. The fact is that I received around €17K but if I was aware that the maximum ex-gratia payment limit is €200K I wouldn’t sign the waiver and obviously €17K is much less than €200K. Isn’t it?
Sorry, but this makes no sense. The maximum tax-free redundancy payment (including the present value of any future pension lump sum) is €200k. But nowhere do you suggest that you were being offered a redundancy payment of €200k. If your redundancy payment was €17k, then the €200k is irrelevant.
Yes €17k is less than €200k, but you were never offered €200k, were you? So I fail to see where you were misled. Even if you were told about the €200k limit, it would not have impacted your decision since you were only getting €17k.
Sorry, am I missing something?
As I understand it, the OP was given poor advice and waived his right to a tax-free lump sum from a fund that’s now worth €80k in order to get a much smaller amount via tax-free redundancy.
It’s as stark as this: I could have €800k in my fund (so €200k tax-free) and be asked if I want to waive that for €20k.
You need to move the PRB into a new scheme and then get that into a PRSA. Benefits that move into a PRSA ‘forget’ about the waiver. In terms of blame, I fear the ship has sailed.
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