Taxes- liquidating a pension

[Flowersandtrees91]

I would be grateful for advice on whether this is correct or not:

A friend of mine liquidated a pension as she is moving overseas. It is only 40k, she got 25% tax free and the balance got tax at nearly 40%; receiving only 28k

I believe she made a mistake, she should have taken 25% this year and about 11k next year and so on until it finished to avoid taxes.

Bit late now.

Depends on her UK income this year and subsequent years too.
Could she reclaim some of the tax from this year?
Perhaps she needed the money now and couldn't be bothered with the faff of doing the withdrawal over a few years.

The 25% TFC is always tax free. (Hence the name) and so the timing choices /tax treatment of the residual fund is independent of the TFC.

Depends where she's moving to.

If it's a country without a dual tax treaty it's possible she'd be taxed on worldwide income, and if they've higher tax rates than us it may not be worthwhile.

Thank you. She is moving to latinamerica. She is British but lived overseas,

She is contacting HMRC as it looks she was tax wrongly with an emergency tax code and needs to claim some taxes.