Pension tax rules that punish those who save too much have pushed people into high-risk investments they would not otherwise have made.
The pension lifetime allowance slaps hefty penalties on savings above £1,073,100. These tax charges have disillusioned hard workers.
Lyle Gould*, 55, from Leeds, said he had stopped his pension contributions and was instead piling £600 a month into cryptocurrencies.
Mr Gould, who is newly self-employed, said he “no longer saw the point” of adding to a pension, putting his retirement fund in Bitcoin instead. He said this was “out of character” as he was a cautious investor.
“Why would I want to pay into a pension when I would have such high tax liabilities? The Government is driving people to take their pension money, which should be in really safe investments, and gamble on cryptocurrencies,” he said. The price of Bitcoin has dropped by 16pc so far this year to £29,678, down from its November peak of £48,000. The currency is highly volatile.
Mr Gould said he held £12,000 in Bitcoin and had lost £5,000 since he started. But neither this nor his financial adviser’s “horror” at his investment strategy will deter him from parking more money in the coin, he said. He plans to invest an additional £30,000 over the next three years.
He said investment returns could boost his pension to £1.7m by the time he started to take an income in four years. Savings above the cap are taxed at 55pc if withdrawn as a lump sum, while income is taxed at 25pc plus income tax. Even if Mr Gould never added to the pot again, he could face a tax bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds. “I’m determined not to give the Chancellor my pension in tax,” he said.
Bitcoin sceptics say it has no intrinsic value as few people use it to buy things. The currency has no Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection, meaning the investment is at risk.
