kstokell

Hi All,

I will be returning to the UK shortly with my wife who is Dutch. As I have been living in the Netherlands for the vast majority of my working life I have little or no entitlement to a UK pension. However both my wife and I currently live on our pensions from the Dutch state and our ex employers, these are taxed at source and the resulting tax-deducted amounts are paid into our NL bank account.

My aim is to get these pensions paid out and taxed only in the UK and my questions are:

- just prior to our move I assume I need to contact our local pension providers and have the pre-tax pension (no Dutch income tax) amounts transferred to our UK bank account?
- secondly I will need to inform the UK tax department to enable the payment of UK tax on this income once we are in the UK?

Has anyone moved back to the UK whilst receiving an overseas monthly pension income (not block sum), and if so can they give me a step by step guide as to how they managed to get this transferred to the UK?

Thanks in advance,
Kevin

durham_lad

Yes, I have moved back to the UK while receiving a foreign pension. In my case it was the USA and I left the pension paying into my US bank which I have kept open. I don't believe you can have HMRC deduct taxes at source through PAYE so you will need to file a self assessment each year to declare and pay HMRC tax on the pension (it is easy to do). I maintain a spreadsheet to record the monthly payments and in my case convert the payments to £s using the monthly HMRC published exchange rates. If you can arrange for your pension provider to pay your pension directly into your UK bank that will make things much easier for you.

I expect you will be able to inform the country you are leaving to stop taking taxes. This worked for me when I was receiving a UK private pension while living in the USA and I informed HMRC that I was no longer tax resident.

christmasoompa

Just for the sake of anybody reading, these two things aren't mutually exclusive. Expats can pay in to the UK pension system from abroad with voluntary NI contributions, it's usually a very small amount (currently £3.05 a week), so a great investment in return for a full pension (currently £179.60 a week).

Not sure how old you are or how many years entitlement you have got, but if you can, it may be worth looking at making voluntary contributions now, you can pay for the previous 6 years to get your entitlement up.

kstokell

Good to know for a lot of people but I don't think in my case it will make a lot of difference. I'm 69, and worked the first ten years of my life in the UK (1970 > 1980) and then the following forty years in the Netherlands (1980 > 2019). I have written to the NI in the UK to get my NI number (I no longer have it) and an update on my NI status. I'll let you know how it works out!

durham_lad

Do let us know. My wife and I were pleasantly surprised to find we had more years than those worked because not working because of full time education, like being in college, gives a full year. We both also had part time jobs at age 16 and 17 and they both counted as full year contributions. I was a lab assistant while doing A Levels, which involved staying behind each day after school for an hour or so to refill the bottles of acid and reagents etc in the chemistry lab for the following days classes. My wife worked on a market stall on weekends during her last 2 years at school doing her A Levels

getoutofbritainquick

I am paying UK voluntary pension contributions and they are charging around £70 per month - am I missing something £3.05 seems very low to me?

durham_lad

Class 2 contributions are £3.05/week and apply to certain groups of folks in the UK and those working overseas. Have a browse through the Gov.UK site to see if you qualify.
https://www.gov.uk/pay-class-2-national-insurance

Overview

Nypool1e

I was living here in the States for about 15 years when the UK pension folks contacted me re paying voluntary NI contributions & if I wanted to voluntarily pay that I owed over 3000 pounds & going forward it would be 3 or 400 hundred pounds annually. I paid the arrears & then continued to contribute annually thereafter, eventually they sent a Cheque back to me saying that I was fully up to date with my contributions & needn’t pay anymore. Not sure when I can start receiving my British pension on my upcoming return to England, anybody know?

durham_lad

You check here, simply enter your date of birth. I was born 1955 and OAP age is 66.

https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-age

Nypool1e

Appreciate that link durhamlad, I shall look into it, thanks.