Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Things you need to know about taking an early pension at 60

By Aharon Deans




The current ages at which folk may claim state allowance are 65 years old for men and 60 years of age for ladies though from April 2010 there has been an incremental move to equalise the state pension age at 65 by 2020 for ladies born after 5 April 1950. Bosses and employees all have usually adopted these retirement ages, with a few folks electing to work on after these ages, though the governing body has been at pains to inspire people to do that. Some have been entitled to early retirement, however, in some situations this has been as a substitute for redundancy.



Once the state annuity had been equalised at age 65, the Pensions Act 2007 provided for it to grow by one year over a two year period from April 2024 and then again in April 2034 and April 2044. So by 2046 the SPA was to be 68.



However, the coalition government plans to bring in a state pension age of 66 from April 2020, 6 years before the date than had previously been intended. This would suggest that women's pension age will have to increase to 65 much sooner than had formerly been planned. The govt. is also considering kicking off a more standard way of enlarging the state pension age to reflect changes in projected longevity.



At the opposite end of the spectrum, current changes to legislation permitted retirement as early as the age of 50 from all schemes, however, this was raised to the age of 55 from 6 April 2010.

The Allowances Act 2007 also reduced the period over which an individual must pay NICs to qualify for a full allowance from 90 % of working life (44 years for a person and 39 years for a woman) to 30 years for everybody,, for people that reach state pension age on or after 6 April 2010.



All these changes is highly likely to come as an unwelcome surprise to females that were looking to take an early pension at 60

The sort of state allowance that an individual person can expect to receive at state pension age is far from certain, with a pre-planned steady move away from an earnings based state second annuity to a fixed rate scheme already in progress, and predicted to reach its conclusion by around 2032. This itself may not basically come to pass with the existing govt. currently consulting on the likely advent of a universal state allowance which may replace the current system of basic state annuity, state second pension and allowance credits.




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