What they’re talking about doing to USS is abominable. My wife has a USS pension, and because she’s already retired, she’s lucky that what she has is locked in. Future USS recipients won’t be anywhere near as lucky.
Thanks. Would you happen to know whereabouts Franceproprty talks about this - in taxation - its quite long!.
Now I think abut it, there may be a box on the tax form for income not taxed in France and not taken into account for calculation of the effective rate.
Can you recall which box you put your lump sum in?
It’s at https://www.french-property.com/news_france/pension_lump_sum. I haven’t done it yet as I only got the lump sum last January.
Updated November 2021. Makes interesting reading, but (personally) I’d have a word with my local Tax Folk here in France just to be sure to be doing it right…
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I have read this article a few times and I cannot see where it says that the lump sum is not taxable ?
Article is titled Taxation of Pension Lump Sums and talks about where they are taxed, paragraph 3 reads “the only exception to this is government service pensions”. I agree the article is confusing and at the end it says for guidance only so maybe even the writer isn’t sure.
Thanks. I remember seeing this article. It’s a little unhelpful in that it starts by stating "The only exception to this general rule [i.e. most pension income is taxable in the country of residence] is government service pensions - military, civil servants, teachers, local government, police - which are taxable in the UK.
The at the end it also states " in addition to income tax, social charges (prélèvements sociaux) of 9.1% are payable on lump-sum pension payments, [except] if you were … in receipt of a government service pension"
Somewhat muddying the waters? The france / UK double tax treaty incudes for the France taxes the “contributions sociales généralisées” - I assume these are the prélèvements sociaux referred to in the article; so they would be exempted in any case by the treaty for government pensions?
Having read and re-read the Article… I reckon it confirms my original thoughts… lump sums are taxable one way or another.
Each person’s situation is likely to be different to another’s… and my suggestion stands… speak with the French Tax Man to see how best to declare the Lump Sum and pay as little tax as possible…
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I asked the tax team at Blevins Franks - they very clearly responded that pension lump sums are reportable / taxable (whether you pay social charges depends on your status, ie S1, private health cover etc).