This week...
DB market needs rethink
Regarding your article ‘Warning of DB transfer “gold rush” next year’ (Dec 10).
I have an old defined benefit scheme that I wanted to transfer away for inheritance tax purposes as my life expectancy is not great.
The quote came to almost 6 per cent of the transfer value thanks to professional indemnity insurance, regulation etc, and even then there was no guarantee that the advice would be to transfer out and into a self-invested personal pension.
The adviser would not accept me as an insistent client – the whole thing needs a proper rethink.
Stuart Forshaw
Tax woes
Regarding your article ‘One-off 5 per cent wealth tax could fill £260bn Covid hole’ (Dec 9).
As a man that has been made redundant close to my planned retirement age, my sole consolation is that I have, through prudence, amassed assets in pensions and Isas that are sufficient to give me a median-income living without endangering the inheritance that my disabled son is likely to require.
A wealth tax of 5 per cent would hurt both him and me (and introduce a disproportionate sequence of returns risk) and I doubt we are the “wealthy” people that people consider when they imagine this proposal. In a drawdown world this sort of idea no longer targets the filthy rich.
In the real world the people targeted by this will often (and mainly) be those that may struggle to accrue additional income.
Russ Craig
Govt response ‘unjustified’
Regarding your article ‘Economy to remain “scarred” by Covid until 2025’ (Nov 25).
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has warned the “economic emergency” caused by the coronavirus “has only just begun”, with the damage “lasting” with “long-term scarring”.
Excuse me Mr Chancellor, but did you not realise the consequences of the reckless actions you took in March in throwing the economy off the cliff edge?
The economic emergency was not because of Covid, but because of the government’s reaction to the virus.
There was another way as many other countries have demonstrably shown, such as Sweden and Japan.
There was no evidence that crashing the economy would save a single life and despite the lack of evidence you decided on a course to destroy many lives and livelihoods and cause misery for millions.
Back in March we needed serious politicians, with good sense to test the evidence and the courage to lead us through a crisis.
The article informs us that the government will borrow £394bn this year, the equivalent of 19 per cent of GDP – the highest level in peacetime.
To do this when your country is not at war is unjustified, unprecedented, and wholly irresponsible.
This debt will be with us for many generations. The economy is not just about money: the economy is about lives.
