The BMA has updated its guidance for GPs about the annual allowance, following extensive lobbying, resulting in two important changes that affect the 19/20 and subsequent tax years.
As an emergency measure for 19/20, NHS England and the Welsh Government made a commitment to pay the annual allowance tax charges in full for eligible clinicians in the England and Wales NHS pension schemes. Doctors who were subject to an annual allowance tax charge should use the option of the ‘scheme pays’ regulations to pay the tax due for 2019/20. From 2020/21 onwards the reduced Tapered Annual Allowance will only affect those with adjusted income of £240,000 and over. Read the full guidance here.
The BMA has also won a court appeal against the Government’s controversial changes to pensions rules introduced in April 2019, granting the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care the power to suspend pension payments to a doctors or NHS professionals charged with certain criminal offences, but not yet convicted. Read the BMA statement here