Government Pension

Hello Kev

Yes you will still get your Government pension from the UK. I had been living here for 3yrs before I claimed mine & it can be paid directly into your spanish bank account as mine is.  If you do claim residency to live in Spain permanantly,, you will pay all your taxes here & only be able to leave for a limited number of days each year for the 1st 5years.

Cheers

Elinspain

There's no problem getting your UK government pension whilst livingherein Spain. A phone call to the Overseas pension centre at Newcastle will get the ball rolling. You can get it paid into a Spanish bank or a UK account either monthly,  quarterly or annual payments and you get the annual increase when it's due.

Steve 

Elinspain

You are not correct, re tax on government pension. Provided it is the precise government pension which you need to check, this income is only taxed in UK, although it does need to be declared to the Spanish tax office, in the "exempt" box on the return.

Hi Kev,

It depends what you mean when you say, "Government pension" - if you're talking about your UK State retirement pension, then yes, as El says, you can have it paid direct from the DWP to your Spanish bank.  

However, if you're talking about "Crown" pensions (Civil Service, Military, some NHS and some Teachers' pensions), then these have to be taxed at source in the UK and probably paid to a UK bank account for you to transfer to Spain yourself.  I say "probably" because it depends on the company managing the payments.  For example, EQ Paymaster handle my husband's RAF pension and they won't send part-payments direct to Spain.

Kind regards,

Kim

I'm an RAF Pensioner as well and I did wonder about that should I become resident here in future (not this year certainly).  I presume he just gets paid as normal into your UK bank account and then you transfer it yourselves to Spain - is that how it works?

I think it's fairly clear from the original post that we are talking about the UK state pension.

Hi Michael,

Yes, it's paid into our UK bank account and then I bring across to Spain whatever we need each month using Wise (formerly Transferwise).

Kind regards, 

Kim

Thanks Kimmy, I assumed that was what happened.   Something to think about for the future if we decide to take the plunge🙂

Thanks everybody for the information!