| Introduction
Considerations
affecting retirement provision
When
do you intend to retire?
Where
are you going to retire to?
What
form and amount of income do you want to have
in retirement?
Are
you confident of a regular income throughout
your working life or do you anticipate that
your earnings will fluctuate considerably?
Are
you going to work in the same country for the
remainder of your working life or are you going
to be in a number of as yet unspecified countries?
Some
of these questions can be impossible to answer.
For instance at the age of 30 one country may
appear an idyllic potential final place in the
sun. However thirty years later your expectations
and views may well have changed, and the country
in question may be very different. Few people
can have any degree of certainty about the path
that their working life will take.
Pension
Portability
Individuals
who work or live in a number of countries are
faced with a more complex situation and one
that is continually changing as legislation
and commercial products evolve in response to
each other.
Although
EU legislation exists covering the transfer
of state (statutory) pensions within the EU,
this is typically difficult to achieve. Transfer
between state pension schemes into or out of
the EU or between other countries is generally
not possible.
A
new EU directive has been drafted recently that
provides for the preservation and transfer of
pension rights within countries in the EU for
occupational pension schemes since these are
becoming far more widely used and in some cases
replace state schemes. The details of this Directive
are of course subject to change during the approval
process. It does not deal with tax or indexation
of pension issues.
Section
1: The Mechanics of pension provision
This
section looks at the various potential sources
of pension provision. These are taken to be
instruments that will provide income to live
on in retirement and some of these are ordinary
investment methods with no specific pension
association. At the end of this section there
is a brief outline of the options at the time
of requirement in terms of how you choose to
receive that income.
Relevant
Country Profiles
Section 2: 'High-Tax' Country
Pension Regimes
This section studies the pensions regime in some of the
countries from which an expatriate may have
originated, and with particular reference to
the situation of someone who lives or may decide
to retire in another, lower-tax (or just sunnier!)
country.
|
 USA
Canada
UK
South Africa
Australia |
Section 3: 'Lowtax' Jurisdictions In Which To
Locate Pensions Savings
The
section describes the regime for mutual funds,
Stock Exchange investment, the banking sector
and the regime for expats/pensioners in a number
of the more prominent offshore locations, including
in a few cases the regime for specialized pensions
instruments.
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