John Greenwood: The new easy access rules create a huge risk of widespread tax avoidance. If everyone over 55 takes full advantage of them, the Treasury could lose £20 billion in 2015-16—obviously, that is a massive number. That will not happen, but if even a tenth of people do, that is still a £2 billion loss. That seems to make quite a hole in the Treasury’s optimistic projection of...
...worth their salt structuring a pension system would have noticed that, I would submit. I have asked the Treasury for clarification of its understanding of the level of salary sacrifice and NI avoidance, and I have not had a response.
John Greenwood: I know they are. I know several advisers who are already talking to employers about it and they are waiting to see. The Government’s position is that there is £20 billion of tax relief or tax avoidance on the table. We will watch and hope it doesn’t get taken up and we will watch out for bad behaviour. It is not clear what bad behaviour is. No one has made it clear, and...