The FT features a story in all the papers this morning, highlighting Sunak's bung to pensioners, who are the only group left in society likely to favour the Tories:
Three thoughts.
First, as with the ludicrous conscription idea, it seems that Sunak can find the capacity to spend when it suits him.
Second, this is not a tax cut. It is a lifting of allowances to prevent tax being paid. Given that the state pension system is not set up to deduct tax at source, in pure admin terms this makes sense.
Third, why is it only pensioners who need protection from fiscal creep?
I expect Labour to copycat this.
Both parties need to be asked who they will penalise as a consequence given their utterly unnecessary dedication to balanced books.
The lack of need to penalise anyone needs to be highlighted by interviewers.
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It isn’t balancing the books it’s balancing resources! The Kamikaze British really struggle to do joined up thinking on this elementary aspect of their lives!
Trying to get the pension vote.
This from being a key minister of the administration that said of the pensioners in Covid, “let the bodies pile high.”
Don’t look at the mess we made, or the lies we told; look at the bribe we are only giving you, because we think we are losing power. And don’t think about why you didn’t receive this benefit over the last fourteen years, when you really needed it …… And we told you, as late as yesterday that we couldn’t afford it because we don’t have the money. We have the money now we need you, but after the vote you will find soon enough that we make up another story, that we don’t have any money. We guarantee that you will pay through the nose (and other orifices when we figure out how to squeeze you dry) for voting for Rishi; and the ridiculous Douglas Ross.
At the expense of thread drift can anyone explain why it isnt possible to tax the State Pension at source.
There are some State Pensioners who only get the state pension and have to pay tax back to HMRC each year which also causes no end of fun for benefits staff (I can explain that bit if you want)
The govermment has decided not to make it possible
There is no PAYE payroll scheme for state pensioners bevause it was presumed that the pension wouild always be less than the personal allowance and use up the first part of it
Good grief £2 a week and they think that buys a person’s vote not to mention their morals…..delusional
I was amazed to see this touted as a ‘bonus for pensioners’, when all I saw was a plan to continue freezing personal allowances for everyone else, which came as a shock (wasn’t this supposed to be temporary?) & frankly didn’t seem like much of a vote winner. Even pensioners can’t be that impressed by being told ‘we won’t introduce a tax on your income you’ve never paid before’ when a bigger concern is likely to be long queues & waiting times for medical treatment, & the effective withdrawal of dental treatment from the NHS. Will anyone’s vote be remotely swayed by this further Tory gaslighting?
I’m surprised that the media aren’t pointing out that pensioners used to get an age-related personal allowance for income tax which was higher than the allowance given to working age people.
It was frozen and then phased out from 2013 onwards by the Tories (and the Liberals) with the supposed justification of “fairness” that increases to the allowance for working age people would catch up and then everyone would get the same amount and increases.
Parliamentary briefing about it:
http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06158/SN06158.pdf
I would really like to see the media ask Rishi Sunak what changed and how he thinks giving pensioners an increased allowance again is “fair” now when it wasn’t before.
I know pensioners who paid more tax than they would have otherwise because the age-related allowance was frozen in 2013. Now the policy is being reversed and they should quietly accept that their losing out in 2013 onwards – inflicted by the same Tory party – was completely pointless?
For the avoidance of doubt, I think it makes sense to set the income tax personal allowance to at least equal the full State Pension. If nothing else, it avoids all manner of pointless admin at HMRC and makes sure low-income pensioners with only a State Pension actually get it all.
I would even make the allowance a bit larger to cover people who only have very small private pensions. There’s no point in making pension providers spend more money on admin than the tax on small pensions is worth.
The problem I have is that working age people should be getting the same allowance, whatever it ends up being. Otherwise we’re expecting them to save for their own pensions at the same time as we’re making them pay extra tax!