Industry officials say a contributory factor to the Treasury's withdrawal of tax relief on residential property in sipps could be because launch of the computer system to monitor such investments was at least six months behind schedule.
According to the Association of Member-Directed Pension Schemes, three weeks before the pre-Budget report delivered the U-turn on Sipps, HM Revenue and Customs told the body the HMRC was at least six months behind on its computerisation programme to monitor the investment of residential property and more esoteric assets into pensions. AMPS says when simplification was first suggested four years ago, the organisation pointed out to the government the problems for both providers and HMRC of allowing pensions to invest in residential property and more exotic assets such as art, antiques and ...
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