Terry Baucher of Baucher Consulting is a well-regarded tax specialist, whom we regularly recommend to clients. In this guest blog, Terry shares some insights, and highlights a few of the important differences between the tax regimes in the UK and NZ.

First, and this is not always as obvious as you might think, New Zealand’s tax system is very different from that of the UK. For starters, there is no tax-free personal allowance, so every dollar of income is taxed. 

Type "UK pension to NZ" (or similar) into any search engine, and you're presented with numerous companies extolling the various benefits of transferring your British pension to a New Zealand Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme (QROPS).

Some of these organisations have "QROPS" or "transfer" as part of their name or may even be promoting their own QROPS product, so you could be forgiven for thinking that transferring to a QROPS is the only viable option.

This is categorically NOT the case!

​Along with millions of people around the world, the team at GBPensions are donning their posh frocks and fancy hats and sitting down on Saturday night (NZ time) to watch the wedding of HRH Prince Henry of Wales to Ms Meghan Markle.
 
And, of course, we all wish Harry and Meghan many years of health and happiness together.
 
At this time, it seems like a good excuse to share a few facts and figures about previous royal weddings.

St George's Day means cake for morning tea in the GBPensions office! This gave us a moment to pause and consider that we've already marked the "feast days" of three of Britain and Ireland's patron saints. But who were these men and why do we celebrate them on those particular dates?

Here is our first interesting fact of the day. Did you know that Saints' Days are celebrated on the days upon which they are believed to have met their (sometimes grisly) demise? This seems unusual in its precision, since there are often very few specifics known about their lives.

In the weeks following 2016's Brexit vote, Immigration NZ received 10,600+ registrations of interest from Brits. That's more than double the figure for the same period in 2015. Whilst not all of these registrations have actually eventuated, the stream of skilled British immigrants moving to New Zealand remains strong and steady.

​In 2017, net migration to NZ hit an all time high of 72,000, and Brits accounted for nearly 10% of this. In fact, the UK (6,728) only comes behind China (10,351) and India (7,409) in terms of migrant numbers, and is still ahead of South Africa, the Philippines, France and Germany.

Buying presents for Brits can be a painful process. We're notoriously non-committal, favouring "Oh, just surprise me!" over any kind of useful comment. Upon opening said surprise, we will likely say, "That's great, thanks" in a somewhat lacklustre tone. Even other Brits aren't sure how to interpret this…

GBPensions would like to try and alleviate some of your Christmas present shopping woes.
 
We've considered predictions for 2017's Christmas bestsellers from some of the UK's major retailers (such as Argos and John Lewis), added a few thoughts of our own, and come up with the following suggestions.
 
Please note: despite our best efforts we cannot guarantee that any of these prezzies will enthral or delight their British recipient. Sorry about that.

We speak frequently about the moving goalposts of UK and NZ pension legislation and how these might affect transfer options for NZ residents, and 2017 has been no exception.

For the first time in some years, there was a bit of potentially good news for investors regarding access to their funds! Here's a quick recap of the year's significant updates – and a few words of caution about how some members of the global financial services industry appear to be changing their tactics.

In early September, British Airways announced plans to close one of its final salary pension schemes (also known as defined benefits (DB) pension schemes). The decision was taken after the pension's deficit reached £3.7 billion in March – despite the company having ploughed £3.5 billion into the scheme since 2003.

British Airways is not an isolated case.

An update about potentially good news for members of NZ QROPS (Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes): greater access to funds leading to the possibility of more flexible investment options.
 
Back in December 2016, we reported on the UK Chancellor's Finance Bill, and highlighted the potentially positive revisions which were due to be made to overseas pension transfers.