Any queries should be addressed directly to Staffordshire Police Pay & Pensions, as indicated in the message below.
Further to the current speculation around tax charges on pensions for retired officers, I just wanted to ask if you could publish the below statement on your websites or social media platforms so that we can reassure retired officers that the associated charges have and are being treated correctly:
Unauthorised payments occur when an officer chooses a lump sum higher that the maximum approved by HMRC. This decision creates an additional tax charge that the officer is liable to pay. This tax may be avoided by reducing the lump sum to a level below HMRC limits which in turn increase the officers monthly pension.
When Unauthorised Payments occur, pension administrators incur a fine, or Scheme Sanction Charge (SCC). It has recently come to light that a small number of forces have incorrectly been passing on the SCC to the retiring officer and are now having to rectify their position.
Staffordshire Police have never adopted such an approach and pensioners may rest assured that any Unauthorised Payments and associated charges have been treated correctly.
if you do have anyone who may still have concerns over the above, could you please ask them to contact us via pay.pensions@staffordshire.police.uk and we will endeavour to answer their concerns to the best of our ability.
Kind regards
Melanie Willmott
Payroll & Pensions Manager