Ed Janes - Quilter Financial Advisers

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Ed Janes - Quilter Financial Advisers

I am a Financial Planner at Quilter Financial Advisers providing services in Pensions, Inheritance Tax and retirement planning, Investments, and Protection.

Do you know what your number is that will enable you to retire? To be at the point that everyone wants to be. To have enough money to live the life you want for the rest of your life, without the fear of running out of money. Well…. I can tell you. You can refer to me as a “lifestyle” financial planner. I help you achieve your long-term financial goals by taking the time to understand how things a

re for you now and listen to what you would like life to be like for you and your family in the future. I use cutting-edge software to create a well-balanced financial plan as well as advise you how to invest wisely, effectively and as tax-efficiently as possible. I also help people with intergenerational wealth, so your hard work can help the people you want, for generations. I often think about the saying “You don’t know what you don’t know” as it prompts the question; Can you be certain that you’re making informed decisions about you and your family’s future if you’re not taking advice? Approver Quilter Financial Services Limited & Quilter Mortgage Planning Limited. 29/10/2024

01/09/2026

Peter took £60,000 from his pension. The tax deducted was £25,379. The right amount was £11,432. Nobody made a mistake.

He retired in the spring at 62, and this was his first taxable withdrawal: £60,000 to clear the mortgage and sort out the kitchen, with no other taxable income this year.

On those facts the full-year tax comes to £11,432.

What actually left the payment was £25,379.

That's not an error, and it isn't the provider being difficult. A first withdrawal usually arrives before the provider holds a proper tax code, so it's taxed on what's called an emergency basis. In plain terms, the system assumes the £60,000 is the first of twelve identical monthly payments, and gives Peter one month's worth of allowances instead of a year's worth.

One twelfth of his tax-free allowance. One twelfth of the 20% band. One twelfth of the 40% band. The rest of the payment, over £48,000 of it, taxed at 45%.

So Peter is £13,947 short at exactly the moment he'd planned to spend the money.

He does get it back.

There's a claim that takes a few weeks, or HMRC settles up automatically after the tax year ends. Between April and June this year HMRC repaid £50.35 million of exactly this tax, across more than 12,600 claim forms. That's an average of about £3,993 a time, sitting with HMRC instead of with the people who'd earmarked it.

Here's the part almost nobody is told. A lot of that queue was avoidable. A small first withdrawal, taken early and well ahead of the main one, gets a live tax code onto the provider's records.

The main payment is then taxed with a proper share of the year's allowances behind it rather than one month's worth. The later in the tax year it lands, the closer it comes to the right figure, and a March payment can come out right to the pound.

Same pension, same money, same tax year. In one order it's £13,947 light on the day it matters. In the other, the gap shrinks, and with the timing right it disappears.

The withdrawal is rarely the mistake. The sequence is.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change.

28/08/2026

Michael earned a £10,000 pay rise and kept about £4,000 of it. He assumed payroll had made a mistake. It hadn't.

He's 46, does well, and had just crossed into six figures for the first time. He expected to lose 40% of the rise, like the rest of his higher earnings. Instead he lost closer to 60%. On that slice of income, he keeps just 40p in every pound.

There's no 60% rate in the rulebook. This one is hidden. Once your income passes £100,000, your tax-free personal allowance starts to disappear, £1 of it for every £2 you earn above the line, until by around £125,000 it's gone entirely. So Michael is taxed on the rise itself, and taxed again on the allowance he's quietly losing. Two bites, one pay rise.

It's one of the strangest features of the system: a stretch of income, roughly £100,000 to £125,000, taxed more harshly than the money sitting above it. Nobody designed it as a 60% band. It's a side effect, and most people walk straight into it without being told it's there.

Here's the part that turns it from a grievance into a plan. The same mechanism runs in reverse. Put that slice of income into a pension, and you don't just get the usual relief, you also win back the personal allowance you were losing. In that band, a pension contribution is effectively worth 60p in every pound. There's no other allowance in the system that gives back at that rate, and it exists only here, only while you're standing in it.

This isn't about hiding income or clever schemes. It's about where the money lands. Left as salary, most of that slice goes in tax. Directed into a pension, most of it stays Michael's, just later, with a quarter of it available tax-free when he draws it.

He didn't need a pay rise he could barely keep. He needed to know the band was there before the money arrived, not after.

The rate isn't the problem. Not knowing it's there is.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary, and tax legislation is subject to change.

26/08/2026

When their father died at 71, the pension he left could have paid his two daughters an income for decades, entirely free of income tax. A deadline nobody mentioned turned it into taxable income for the rest of their lives.

He was 71, so under 75. That single fact mattered more than anyone realised. Because he died before 75, whatever his daughters drew from the inherited pension could have been tax-free, permanently.

There was one condition. The pension had to be moved into their names, into beneficiary drawdown, within two years of his death.

Nobody flagged it. Between the funeral, probate, and a provider that took months to respond to anything, the two years slipped by. By the time the paperwork was finished, the window had closed.

Now every pound they draw is taxed as their own income, stacked on top of what they already earn. Both work, and one is a higher-rate taxpayer, so for her a large share of every withdrawal simply disappears in tax, year after year, from a pension that was meant to pass tax-free.

This isn't about being forced to take the money out in a hurry. It's a silent two-year clock that starts on the date of death, whether or not anyone is watching it.

And it's about to matter more. From April 2027, unused pensions count towards the estate for inheritance tax. The income-tax trap that caught these two was already there, untouched by that reform, and now more families will be handling pensions, probate and deadlines all at once.

I see this exact situation across London and the Thames Valley: families still grieving, with a filing deadline nobody told them about.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary, and tax legislation is subject to change.

$Sarah tried to put £40,000 into her own pension. The rules let only a fraction of it count. She'd earned the money; she ...$

24/08/2026

Sarah tried to put £40,000 into her own pension. The rules let only a fraction of it count. She'd earned the money; she simply couldn't pay it in the way she assumed.

She's 55, runs a limited company, and pays herself the way many owners do: a small salary, the rest in dividends. A strong year left £40,000 spare, and she wanted it in her pension rather than sitting in the business.

So she did the obvious thing and paid it in personally, from her own account. Then her accountant explained the problem.

Personal pension contributions are capped by your earnings. Not your income, your earnings, which for practical purposes means salary. Dividends don't count. Sarah takes a small salary and a large dividend, which is efficient for almost everything else, but it means the amount she can personally pay into a pension is small. Most of her £40,000 fell outside what the rules allowed.

There's a way to do exactly what she wanted, and it runs through the company, not her. If the company makes the contribution as her employer, and it's a genuine part of what she's paid for her work, it doesn't touch the earnings cap at all. The whole £40,000 can go in, and the company gets tax relief on it as a business cost.

The difference between the two routes isn't small. Taken as a dividend first and then paid in, the money is taxed on the way out of the company before it ever reaches the pension, and she keeps well under half. Paid straight in by the company, the whole amount goes to work. Even after the tax she'll pay drawing it in retirement, where a quarter comes out tax-free, she's meaningfully ahead, and further ahead still if her tax rate drops once she stops working.

The money was always hers. She just had to send it by the right route.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary, and tax legislation is subject to change.

30/07/2026

David is 44, runs a limited company, and pays £100 a month for his life cover. £1,200 a year, straight out of his own bank account. Like most business owners, he’s never questioned it.

The premium isn’t the problem. Where it’s paid from is.

Follow the money backwards. To have £1,200 sitting in his personal account, David first has to get it out of the company. That means a dividend, taxed at 35.75% at the higher rate, paid from profit that has already suffered corporation tax at 25%.

Work it through and £1,200 of premium consumes about £2,490 of company profit. For a company in the £50,000–£250,000 marginal band, where a great many owner-managed businesses sit, it’s nearer £2,540.

Now the same cover, arranged as a Relevant Life policy. The company pays the £1,200 directly, and it’s normally an allowable business expense, so it comes from about £1,200 of profit.

£2,490 against £1,200. Same insurer, same sum assured, same person covered. Roughly half the cost, and the only thing that changed is who owns the policy.

Over ten years, that gap is close to £13,000, on cover David was buying anyway.

The advantages don’t stop at the premium:

No benefit-in-kind charge on David, and no National Insurance for him or the company;
It’s written in trust, so the payout is free of income tax and sits outside his estate; and set up the usual way, it doesn’t use up any of the tax-free allowance on his pension death benefits.

The set-up is where it lives or dies. It has to be a genuine employee benefit, cover for David’s family, not shareholder or key person protection, and the structure has to be right from the outset. Get it wrong and the tax treatment can fall away. It’s also only available to people the company actually employs, so sole traders can’t use it.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. The tax treatment of trusts depends on individual circumstances and may change.

28/07/2026

Helen has £20,000 sitting in her company that she doesn’t need.

She’s 48, the business has had a good year, and her drawings already cover everything she and her family spend. The instinct, and it’s almost universal among directors, is to take it out anyway. Get it into her own name, into a savings account, where it feels safe.

Here’s what that instinct costs.

Drawn as a dividend, the £20,000 is taxed twice on the way out. Corporation tax at 25% leaves £15,000 to distribute. Higher rate dividend tax at 35.75% takes another £5,363. Helen ends up with £9,638 in her account.

She has paid £10,363 in tax, 52% of the original profit, to move money she didn’t need from one pot to another.

Now the alternative. The company pays the same £20,000 straight into her pension as an employer contribution. It’s normally an allowable deduction against profit, so there’s no corporation tax. No income tax. No National Insurance for her or the company.

£20,000 into the pension, against £9,638 into her bank account, from identical profit.

The gap then widens, because of where the money sits afterwards. In her own name, growth is exposed, with dividends taxed above the £500 allowance and gains above the £3,000 exemption. Inside the pension, growth is free of both income tax and capital gains tax.

The fair objection is what happens on the way out, because a pension isn’t tax free at the other end. Usually 25% can be taken tax free, with the balance taxed as income at her marginal rate. Even so, and assuming no growth whatsoever, the pension route leaves her around £14,000 net if she’s still a higher rate taxpayer in retirement, and closer to £17,000 if she isn’t. Against £9,638.

The real question isn’t tax. It’s access.

Pension money is locked until minimum pension age, rising to 57 in 2028. For Helen at 48, that’s the best part of a decade out of reach. Money she might genuinely need shouldn’t go near a pension. Money she is confident she won’t touch is an entirely different question.

One change worth flagging. From April 2027, most unused pension funds fall inside the estate for inheritance tax, so the old argument about pensions being a neat way to pass wealth on largely falls away. What that reform doesn’t touch is any of the above. The efficiency of getting money in is unaffected.

The conditions matter. Employer contributions are limited by the annual allowance of £60,000, with up to £180,000 of unused allowance potentially available from the previous three years, and must be defensible as part of a reasonable remuneration package for the work actually done. They need to be paid before the company’s year end to land in that period.

This assumes a higher rate dividend taxpayer, the 25% corporation tax rate, and profit that is genuinely surplus.

Paying tax on money you don’t need is a choice. It’s just rarely presented as one.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Individual and company circumstances vary and are subject to change.

24/07/2026

Two identical life policies. One pays the family £600,000. The other pays £360,000.

Same insurer. Same premium. Same sum assured. The difference isn’t the policy.

Tom is 46, married, two children, and holds £600,000 of level term cover. He arranged it online in an afternoon, which is more than most people manage.

What he didn’t do was write it in trust.

Without a trust, the policy pays into his estate. It sits there alongside the house and the savings, waits for probate, and is assessed for inheritance tax like everything else. Where the estate has already used its available nil-rate band — and with a family home, most have — that £600,000 is taxed at 40%. £240,000 to HMRC, from a policy bought specifically to protect two children.

Written in trust, the proceeds never enter the estate at all. The trustees receive the money and pass it straight to the beneficiaries. No inheritance tax on the payout, and no waiting on probate — usually weeks, rather than the months an estate can take to unlock.

The trust itself normally costs nothing. Insurers provide the paperwork, and at the point of application it takes minutes.

A £600,000 policy that pays £360,000 hasn’t failed. It was just never finished.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. The tax treatment of trusts depends on individual circumstances and may change.

28/06/2026

From April 2027, a pension could be taxed twice.

For over a decade, pensions have been one of the most efficient ways to pass on wealth, usually sitting outside the estate for inheritance tax. That's changing, and it's now law rather than proposal.

From 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds and death benefits will be counted as part of your estate for inheritance tax. Where the estate exceeds the available thresholds, the excess is taxed at 40%. And if you die after age 75, your beneficiaries also pay income tax at their own rate on whatever they draw from the pot. Stacked together, the combined effective rate on an inherited pension can reach the mid-sixties per cent.

Some things stay protected. Pensions left to a spouse or civil partner remain exempt, as do gifts to charity and most death-in-service benefits. But the broad direction is clear: the old instinct to spend everything else first and leave the pension untouched may now need rethinking.

There's also a practical sting. Your executors (not the pension provider) will be responsible for reporting and paying the tax, often on money they can't easily access.

None of this means rushing to empty a pension. It means reviewing the order in which you draw your assets, checking your expression-of-wish forms, and looking at your estate as a whole. The window to plan calmly is now, not in 2027.

This is provided for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change.

26/06/2026

£2,200,000. The asset most people forget to insure.

That's roughly what a 35-year-old earning £50,000 will be paid over the rest of their career (50k salary until age 67 with an annual 2% increase).

For most people, it is their single largest asset and the one they are least likely to protect.

We insure the things our income buys. The house. The car. The phone in our pocket. Yet the income itself, the engine behind all of it, usually goes uninsured.

It's worth knowing what the state actually provides if you can't work. Statutory Sick Pay is up to £123.25 a week, for a maximum of 28 weeks. After that it stops, and you're directed toward means-tested benefits. For a household built around a full salary, that isn't so much a safety net as a brief pause before a long drop.

This is what income protection is designed for. It pays a regular, usually tax-free income if illness or injury stops you working, and it keeps paying until you recover or until your chosen retirement age.

You set how long you wait before it pays, which lets you dovetail it with any employer's sick pay, and to keep the cost down.

There's also a detail most people get wrong. They assume it's expensive, or that life cover is the priority. But during your working life, you are statistically more likely to face a long period unable to work than to die. The cover that matches that risk is the one most often missing.

The principle is simple. Protect the thing that pays for everything else. The monthly cost is modest set against an income that, over a career, runs well into seven figures.

This is provided for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cover terms, definitions and costs vary by provider and individual circumstances. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change.

08/06/2026

Marcus is 61. His accountant says he’s worth £4.5m. £4m of that is a company he hasn’t sold yet.

On paper, Marcus has had a brilliant career. Three decades building a business from nothing into something genuinely valuable. The plan, as he describes it, is simple: sell in a few years, and the proceeds become his retirement.

The trouble is that almost everything he owns depends on a single event that hasn’t happened yet, at a price nobody can guarantee, to a buyer who doesn’t exist yet.

If the sale takes longer than hoped, his retirement waits with it. If his sector cools, or higher borrowing costs make buyers more cautious and push valuations down, or the offer simply comes in lower than expected, his entire plan moves. A sale price 15% below expectation isn’t an abstract figure to Marcus. It’s roughly £600,000 off the rest of his life, with nothing else to absorb it.

This isn’t an argument against his business. The business is what created the wealth in the first place. The risk is letting it become the whole strategy rather than the source of it.

The owners who retire well tend to do something quietly sensible in the years before they sell. They build wealth outside the company as they go. Pensions, ISAs, investments that have nothing to do with the firm. Not in a panic the year before exit, but steadily, over time, and through far more efficient routes than a last minute dividend grab.

Because the sale itself is taxed too. A large disposal in one year brings a capital gains tax bill that takes a real slice of the proceeds. Reliefs such as Business Asset Disposal Relief may reduce the rate on a portion of the gain, but the lifetime limit means most of a sale this size is taxed at the standard rate. One asset, taxed on the way out, with the timing of the whole thing outside your control.

The founders who retire comfortably are rarely the ones who bet everything on the exit. They’re the ones who spent years building something the sale never had to rescue.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary and are subject to change.

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