Investment & Investing

Is redundancy tax free? Or is that a myth?
If they pay straight into your pension I assume it would be an employer contribution and no top up from the government?
If you receive it in cash (tax free) then you could pay in as a personal contribution and give will give you 20%

The first £30k of a redundancy payment is exempt from income tax.

Up to 30k is untaxed apparently https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/work/losing-your-job/do-you-have-to-pay-tax-on-your-redundancy-payout

If you receive it in cash (tax free) then you could pay in as a personal contribution and give will give you 20%

Per the link from @aggi, only if you have earned an equivalent amount as normal ("relevant") earnings (during the same tax period).

True, and it obviously depends on salary, payout etc. But it’s near the end of the tax year and unless you are maxing out your pension up to 100% of your salary (relative earnings) or 60k for the last 3 years, you can use your unused allowance from previous years.

"I can confirm you do have a Trading account currently open which is why you are on Investor + SIPP. I can close this account for you if you would like me to as it does have a zero balance."

No shit, Sherlock, I explained that I opened the trading account like last week. What I want to know is why have you been charging me for one for the last 5 fucking years?

Don't be like hippy. pay attention to your money things.

Can anyone explain to me in layman's terms on how tax is calculated of you're using a share testing platform such as Etoro or Revolut where all trading is done in USD? I've only seen guidance from HMRC on shares that are traded domestically in GBP?

I'd assume a monthly rate is applied on the day of transaction

If within the period currency fluctuates you may experience minor loss/gain

I am not a tax specialist but my understanding is you should convert the disposal proceeds into sterling at the rate at the time of disposal, convert the purchase cost into sterling at the prevailing rate at the time of purchase, and then your gain/loss is the difference. You should not calculate the gain/loss in USD and then convert. Here's the HMRC manual.

Is anyone using Wise/Revolut/Monzo etc to hold Euro's? Or recommendations for a Euro bank account?

My normal approach is to just accept the rate Halifax convert my spending at, but I've got some Euro spend coming up later this year that I can't pay on a credit card, and I'd like to convert GBP into Euro's when the rate looks good. Just concerned about holding a larger chunk of Euro's for an extended period, partially from a protection perspective and also partially from an interest perspective.

I use revolut to hold fx - if you have international currency spend of a decent amount then could be worth having the premum plan as there are limits in the free pla. Think wise is fairly similar, though i don't have experience

If I'm planning a trip somewhere, I typically look at the rate and then buy small batches of the currency to hold in Revolut (or Wise). Spreads the risk of it being shit when you buy a bit and if you time it right you might end up with a little more spending money.

Dunno about interest rates and stuff. I think Monzo had savings accounts but I didn't think you could hold foreign money in Monzo just GBP?

The payout will be after April this year so next financial year and will be more than 30k. I was thinking about putting in some of the excess into my pension.

Also, if you sell in USD and then hold waiting for a favourable exchange rate, you need to assess cap gains on the exchange rate "win" too

That's what I did a few years ago. I got my voluntary redundancy payment just after April 6th and put everything over £30k (not much but still some) into my pension and stuck the £30k in Premium Bonds and drew down on it whilst I had the summer off before starting a new job in November.

Trading212 down to 5.03 rather than 5.16 or whatever it was.

ii got back to me... they expected me to notice that there's a cheaper plan instead of just putting users that "only had a SIPP" to their "SIPP-only plan". Like being charged for gas+elec when you only ever had electricity. That's the kind of attitude that will keep you customers! Oh, look, now I have a trading212 account... so now I'm inclined to get that refund and then move the entire thing off over to trading212 as a very tangible way of flipping you the bird.

I'm fucking sure I asked them about the price hike at the time and they said it was some introductory offer that had expired. Pricks.

"You have held had a SIPP account since 2018 and the only plan offered at the time was the Investor plan.

We have notified pricing correspondence via secure and email throughout the years.

All accounts on our website are self managed, therefore if you were wanting to amend your service plan, it would be your own responsibility to request a change in plan.

However, as a good will gesture I would be happy to refund 6 months difference of the cheaper plan to the plan you have been on."

Payroller here, as said, up to £30k is free from any deductions (tax, ni, pensions, etc) the balance would be subject to tax and NI at the appropriate rate.
If you have a salary sacrifice pension, whacking a chunk in will reduce your tax / NI liability accordingly.
E.G. you are getting salary and AL payout on top of the Redundancy, the redundancy will likely be 2 payments, 1 for the tax free and 1 for the taxable, you may have a PILON amount too, that would be taxable, plus your normal pay to your leaving date and any unused annual leave (pro rata to your leaving date)

Yeah, June 2020 I asked about it

"I have looked at your account and can see that you have a SIPP with us. The monthly cost of this is £9.99 per month to hold an account on our platform and an additional £10 per month for the actual SIPP. Prior to monthly charges we used to charge a yearly fee of £120 for the SIPP and a quarterly fee of £22.50 for the platform fee. On the anniversary date of your last SIPP payment the extra monthly charge will have come into effect."

Fuck knows when they created the SIPP-only account as an option.

I've got a feeling it wasn't actually that long ago (but thats probably within the last 12 months)

Thanks for the responses on holding EUR. I'm going to go for Wise over Revolut. As ofthis evening:

1. Wise conversion rate is marginally better than Revolut (but not much in it, 1.2008 vs 1.1972 so 0.3%)
   
2. Euro 'savings' rate is better (2.61% variable money market fund vs 1.63% interest).
   
3. Wise say the account is FSCS protected but my money would technically be invested anyway. Not clear whether Revolut's Euro savings accounts are FSCS protected. I think the GBP ones are but can't see anything on their Euro savings protection
   
4. You need a Revolut Metal account at £15/month to get a Euro savings account anyway, which seems a lot to pay for a lower return
   
   

I think I will keep both accounts and check the rate differences when I transfer money, but more likely to use Wise. The free Revolut has a £1k monthly transfer limit and I'd have to pay £8/month for more than £3k/month currency exchange, so their exchange rate would have to step up to beat Wise across the rate & interest.

I had 3/4 month fee free from ii after a referral on here and then they started charging me. I queried it and they said the referral wasn’t registered properly but they will give me 12 months and £200 to the referrer.

So it’s worth checking you are not being charged and the £200 got paid

Free £5 for anyone opening a Monzo investment account through my referral link (and £5 for me too).

https://monzo.com/-deeplinks/investments-referral?instance_params_id=jcqw-ahwv-xkof

Quite like it as a pot to throw random bits and bobs in for pure ease of use, roundups, 1p a day saving etc and reasonably good performance. Free money!

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I referred my partner and got £200. I don't know if she's not being charged yet but we'll sure as shit be looking after this trading account bullshit.

Cheers. I have a salary sacrifice pension. I won't have any AL, PILON or anything else. I want my employer to pay a chunk of the amount above £30k into my pension as a salary sacrifice. All they've said is 'it's not possible to pay your redundancy pay into your pension'. I'm querying it with them, because I don't see why it's not possible.