The state pension will never be taxed under the Conservatives, Rishi Sunak will declare on Tuesday.
Give it a couple of years and that’s going to mean a different income tax allowance for pensioners as against earners. Not sensible – but, electuion time, votes to be bought.
Had a nice letter / questionnaire from my local tory MP explaining how they will look after us pensioners with the triple lock, so please vote for me.
No mention of the fact that in 2010, 4 million pensioners were paying income tax and now it is over 9 million.
As you say Tim, another few years and the state pension will be nudging £12,570, so they’ll have to fudge something……….
A little bit of news Rishi, you already are taxing the State Pension in all but name because of the Chancellors (plural) failure to increase the Personal Allowance. My tax code is now K. These twats really do think we’re stupid.
OK, the pension is protected, but we have to volunteer for military service. They don’t like it up ’em, Mr Mainwaring.
Tories understand they can’t increase taxes any further. So they plan to steal a year of every 18 year old’s life; after all, they have no money to steal. But down the line, it will be a year later before they are rich enough to plunder. Opportunity costs everywhere.
They have form on stealing years of lives. Given the life expectancy tables in the UK, they happily waltzed off with 2 of my remaining 15 years in lockdown, which is a bloody sight more than 1 year out of an 18 year-old’s life expectancy. And I do not propose that as a defence of the ludicrous National Service idea.
Sorry, sloppy grammar and no edit facility….
“in lockdown, they happily waltzed off with 2 of my remaining 15 years”.
Apologies.
formertory said:
“they happily waltzed off with 2 of my remaining 15 years in lockdown …
“Sorry, sloppy grammar and no edit facility….
“in lockdown, they happily waltzed off with 2 of my remaining 15 years”.
Had Murphy had his way, we would still be looking at a remaining 15 years in lockdown
(not that that absolves the Conservatives; they were more than bad enough)
I really don’t understand why Sunak is throwing supposedly codger-friendly policies at the wall hoping something will stick. Does he really think this will gut the Reform vote? Man’s a loon, but that’s no revelatory insight.
“that’s going to mean a different income tax allowance for pensioners as against earners”
Unless my memory is playing false (it has been known) not long ago we had a period when the income tax personal allowance was different for OAPs and the younger.
Dearieme, you are perfectly correct.
There was an age allowance, sufficient to keep people on the state pension, plus a modest annuity or occupational pension, out of the tax system.
Perhaps it was the creep Brown who ended the allowance.
The triple lock as implemented is just plain stupid. Particularly so when wage increases and inflation fall out of step. If it is to be kept the increase should be the moving average of the three measures, not the highest one every year.
The Other Bloke in Italy said:
“There was an age allowance, sufficient to keep people on the state pension, plus a modest annuity or occupational pension, out of the tax system.
“Perhaps it was the creep Brown who ended the allowance.”
Osborne actually, but he abolished it the decent way by increasing the standard allowance until it was more than the old age one.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06158/
RichardT: …and, as I recall, his reward was to be pilloried for gving a handout to richer pensioners when their benefitting from the consequent removal of the claw back of their age allowances made them the only significant category of winners in that (those) budget(s).
Mr Smith retires a year early before he qualifies for State pension.
He has an income from investments if £15 000 and pays tax on the amount above his personal allowance of £12 570, = £2 470 @ 20% = £486.
A year later he starts receiving State pension, say £10 000.
He will not be taxed on this because the State pension is not taxed so will still only pay £486.
Flight of pigs passes overhead.
Of course State pension is taxed! It is considered as part of the personal allowance in order to assess tax liability. If it were tax free it would not need to be declared.
Just more of the smoke and mirrors to delude the common folk… who seem to like the show.
The justification for the ‘triple lock’ was that our state pensions were some of the lowest in Europe (partly because we had such good private pension provision before Bottler Brown destroyed it), so it should be gradually increased. I don’t know where such a comparison would place us now.
We have some of the lowest pensions in Europe in *money* terms because we also have free healthcare, free transport, housing benefit, council tax benefit, pension credit, which other countries don’t have.
John B @ 2.31, exactly what happened to my mate, a train Driver who retired a couple of years early. Not really understanding of financial matters too much, paid Income Tax on his private pension until he hit 65 when Wham!! State Pension kicks in and his private pension gets hammered.
No Income Tax on the State Pension though……..
Just had a thought…….A friend was in receipt of the state pension plus a small amount from her deceased husbands private pension, which left her just under the threshold. But she got carers allowance on top of that. Do they include ALL income or are benefits not included when calculating your liabilities?
@jgh
It’s true that a proper comparison of state provision for the elderly would need to include the other state benefits that may be available. But I think most European countries have something approaching free healthcare for older people – even the US has Medicare. I still believe the UK provision was (historically) relatively niggardly (if we’re still allowed to use that word), hence the ‘triple lock’.