Bill,
I've done a fag packet calculation and estimate that you've used about a fifth of your lifetime allowance, certainly nowhere near 92%. Lets assume that we work to the new (current) LTA (£1.5 millions) and not the old one (£1.8 millions).
91% of 1500000 = 1365000
As your pension is in payment, that figure is then divided by 20 which gives us £68250. However, instead of receiving an annual pension of £68250, I assume that your annual pension in payment is somewhere in the region of low/mid 20s, so your LTA% should only be about 20% used. Without digging deeper, the only thing I can assume is that you haven't filtered an inheritance of a million quid or so into another pension over the years and forgotten about it?! A couple of clients have had snags with their AFPS payments in May though, so a call to Paymaster on 0845 1212 514 (#3) requesting a LTA percentage calculation might help. I'd be interested to know what they say..
You raise a good point about the new Lifetime Allowance (LTA). Although not exclusively an 'Airship' problem, 2/3* (for instance) are certainly going to be creating significant taxation problems for themselves with the revised LTA if they do nothing, and that doesn't even take into account pension fund growth via a concurrent private and/or second civvy career. If they don't expect a pension in accumulation to grow (or by more than CPI), they should consider taking advice about declaring 'Protection' from HMRC and considering other retirement planning options. They only have limited time in which to do that. The taxation rate is 55% (55) of all accumulated contributions into a fund that nominally is worth more than £1,500,000.