Alun Rees-Williams

I know what I can do with it going forwards.

If we go back when we first started transferring pensions out of the UK, rules were very different.

So we could transfer.

We started doing this in the 90s, mid-90s, and you could effectively have your tax-free money in the UK.

You could be any age you like, come out to New Zealand and transfer it tax-free, as long as you could prove residency and you could prove that you're employed.

That's all you needed.

went into a fund here as it had to, but you could immediately cash out that fund.

There was no lock-in whatsoever.

Didn't have KiwiSaver and there was no UK restriction, realistically.

It was just you had to prove employment and you had to prove residency.

So you could effectively take advantage of it, bring your money out completely tax-free from one jurisdiction to another, you're still within your four years, and have a tax-free lump sum of money to do what you want to do with.

Yes and no.

Tax is complicated in a way.

Always is.

But what the New Zealand government does is it gives you four years of transitional residency.

So effectively the easiest way to think about it is I step off the aeroplane, I've immigrated or returned, it's my first time back into the country or it's my first time entering the country to be a tax resident.

And you've got a four-year window where you don't pay any tax on the money coming in.

If you transferred it in year five, you would have to pay tax on a little bit of it, and it increases every year.

So if we think about, for ease of math, if we think I transferred exactly 100,000 New Zealand dollars, I pay tax on 4.76% of that.

At my marginal rate of tax.