| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Deferring your state pension | |
| Posted by: | Sam Hearn | |
| Date/Time: | 12/05/15 20:40:00 |
| "Would it not be fairer to make the pensioners take some of the pain?" - Will, this is a perceptive comment but you will already have seen much earlier in this thread that Maggie (and she is not alone) wishes to avoid paying any income tax at all simply because she has reached a certain age. My apologies Maggie if I have oversimplified or misrepresented your views. We now have 11 million people aged over 65 (twice the population of Scotland) in fifteen years time this is predicted to rise to 20 million. The impact on the public finances is likely to be be crippling. The state pension is only the tip of the iceberg. For those with no other visible means of support Pension Credit raises the basic weekly allowance to £151.20 a week for a single person. You do not pay income tax on the pension credit. Then there is the impact of the elderly on the NHS and social services. Each and every day two thirds of the people accessing NHS services are over the age of 65. If that number doubles over the next 15 years the NHS as we know it could simply grind to a halt. One partial solution is to merge income tax and national insurance. Chancellors of both the main political parties have been laying the administrative/regulatory foundations for this radical change for the last sixteen years. In the next few years national insurance will be phased out, higher rates of basic rate tax will be introduced and a new payroll tax on businesses will be introduced replacing the employers' part of national insurance. |