A Personal Retirement Savings Account is another type of Personal Pension suitable for employed individuals that do not have access to a company pension arrangement. All employers must offer a facility to their employees, whereby they have reasonable access to at least one PRSA provider.
Benefits of a PRSA:
- The contributor will get tax relief at his/her higher income tax rate of either 20% or 40%.
- The contributor can contribute on a monthly basis by personal direct debit or intermittently by means of a lump sum contribution to avail of tax relief, as per current revenue guidelines.
- ** Last years Finance Bill had a proposal accepted removing BIK on employer PRSA contributions. This means that scope for employer contributions into a PRSA was massively increased to a maximum of €2 million for a recipient with no other pension benefits. This is a huge oppotunity for cash rich companies to invest company profit tax efficiently into favoured investments, ie pension property, platform trading of shares, funds, ETF, life insurance investment.**
- The growth in the fund will be completely tax free.
- You can access 25% of your fund tax free anytime from age 60. Maximum tax free lump sums is limited to €200,000 per person.
- If you join an company pension scheme, you can transfer 100% of your PRSA into the scheme.
- Your employer may contribute into you PRSA to further enhance the growth of your retirement fund. Employee contributions are however limited by age related limited, ranging from 15%-40% of salary.
- In event of untimely death pre-retirement, PRSA benefits are paid in full to your next of kin.
