Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 12 July 2018
88. Deputy Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Finance the amount that would be raised by limiting the tax relief on a pension in cases in which that pension fund has already accumulated enough funds to provide a pension of €48,000 per annum. [32169/18]
View answerThe Standard Fund Threshold (SFT) is the maximum allowable pension fund on retirement for tax purposes. The threshold was introduced in the Finance Act 2006 to prevent over-funding of pensions through tax-relieved arrangements.
Information on the numbers and values of individual pension funds or on individual accrued benefits in pension schemes are not generally required to be supplied to Revenue. Therefore, they have advised that they have no readily available underlying data or methodology on which to base reliable estimates of the possible yield which might be realised from further limiting tax relief on pensions.
Also, it is not possible to quantify the measure outlined by the Deputy because pension funds operate under varying degrees of risk and because the size of a pension fund required to provide a pension of €48,000 per annum will vary depending on, amongst other things, how close to retirement an individual is and how the rate of inflation changes over the intervening period.
The Deputy may wish to note that the Revenue Ready Reckoner, published at this link shows, on page 11, a number of scenarios for changes to Income Tax relief on pensions.
