Another pension

I was looking forward to reading the responses to the Readers’ Forum query Spouse’s pension from Prudence as I have a number of clients in a similar position.

In short I have been wondering whether a company can justify paying pension contributions to the spouse of an employee as part of that employee’s overall remuneration strategy.

For example for a senior employee whose salary package could be worth up to £150 000 per annum from a ‘wholly and exclusively’ perspective I see no difficulty in the employee receiving a package of £100 000 and the spouse receiving benefits worth up to £50 000. In the ordinary way this would all be assessable on the employee under normal principles.

However what is the position if the spouse’s package included (to a greater or...