Levy undermines pension certainty

As the Government introduces legislation with one hand to force pension schemes to meet certain solvency levels, it has withdrawn over €800m from Irish pension funds with the other hand.

The pension levy was introduced as part of the Finance Act in 2011. The scheme imposes stamp duty of 0.6% on pension scheme assets for four years, from 2011 to 2014

To meet the payments required by the Government, pensions schemes may be forced to cut payments to retirees.