Taking tax-free cash could be mistake

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Choosing to take tax free cash from a final salary pension scheme, could be one of the worst decisions people can make, according to the latest A-Day webcast from Standard Life.

The fourth in the series of A-Day webcasts for advisers looks at the potential pitfalls of people giving up valuable pension benefits for relatively little return, particularly as new rules after 6 April will allow employees to take even more of their pensions as a tax free lump sum. Presented by John Lawson, head of pensions policy at Standard Life, the webcast uses a hypothetical example of an employee who takes the current maximum lump sum of one and a half times their annual earnings. In this case the pension income would be reduced by a typical commutation factor of 12 to 1, wher...

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