IACBA Bursary Time to move employee pensions

The Bar of Ireland Pension Trust provides a home for members’ pensions. However, Clinch Wealth Management (Clinch) says that there are new options for pensions for employees of barristers through the PRSA system.

Up to July 2022, a barrister funding a pension for an employee would use an executive pension. Then the Pensions Authority announced that new European pensions legislation would be strictly applied to executive pensions with immediate effect, which stopped the issuing of new pensions of this kind. All existing executive pensions must be moved within three years, states Clinch. The recent Finance Act introduced a new tax relief regime for Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSAs) that has several attractive features, according to Clinch: n an annual or lifetime funding limit of ¤2m (¤2.15m in practice); n the employee does not need a high salary or long service to fund a ¤2m pension; n employer contributions are fully allowable against income tax, PRSI and USC for the barrister; n the employee can have multiple PRSAs and retire them gradually; n on death, the full PRSA value is payable as a tax-free lump sum to a spouse; n a PRSA can be continued to age 75; and, n a PRSA offers the widest range of investment options.