OT: Petition to double UK pensioner's tax free allowance

But your VAT argument applies to workers the same as it does for pensioners.

I dislike the British tax system, and HMRC in particular, as much as you seem to. But I don't understand the argument that people on pensions should be charged at a different income tax rate than people who are working.

It *would* be rational to increase the personal allowance for everyone. But the justification for doing that would low incomes, not one's status as pensioner or worker , and so the same rules should apply to both.

The workers have an employer and thus can negotiate a pay rise to cope with higher outgoings. (Whether that is successful or not is a different argument).

A person receiving a state pension is stuck with whatever the state lets them have. If that was sufficient to live on there would be no need to make a pension supplement available. The actual pension amount is dependent on National Insurance contributions between leaving full time education and reaching retirement age (that has been the case since

Until some time after the Second World War, National Insurance was just that, a ring fenced pot of money only to be used for pensions and the NHS. Then some thieving Chancellor decided the pot of money should be confiscated and used for plugging a hole in the taxation finances. I don't actually have it in for HMRC - they just do what the politicians instruct them to do. It is the incompetent Chancellors that have wrecked the UK economy that I blame.

As for raising the personal allowance, it used to be automatically raised each year. It is only the recent Governments who haven't followed nearly a century of Custom and Practice.

And once one government breaks the 'rule', it is far easier for later governments to just follow on. Income Tax started as a temporary measure.

I tend to agree. Because I am retired, I don't have to budget for daily travel to work, or all those incidental work-related expenses. I don't have to pay NI either. Hence a 'managable' income for me could be poverty wages for a worker.

Isn't it the same with many Government policies. In opposition a political party may object vigorously with what a ruling government proposes and will vote against it. A few years down line when governments change I don't see many policies being reversed by the party that once opposed them.

No. AIUI, his father was not a toolmaker as that term is usually understood.

I wasn't talking about what people choose to say in later life about their social class origins. I was talking about their social class origins as they actually were / are.

At one time, there *was* an additional personal tax allowance for people over a certain age. I think it was abolished in the general post-1997 bonfire of tax allowances (married man's, child tax allowance, mortgage tax relief, etc).

Well I wasn't.

" Just the people who are affluent but think they come from the 'working class'"

Perhaps I should have said "the people who are affluent but *claim* they come from the 'working class'"

Is there anything self-contradictory or anomalous in that thought?

I can really only refer back to my earlier post by saying that current affluence in adult life cannot and does not mean that one cannot have been born into a genuinely working class family and background.

This also addresses the thought that being born and brought up within the working class is somehow of no relevance to later life. On the contrary, such an upbringing conditions the whole of one's life.

There is plenty of research on this subject. See, for instance:

There’s an interesting finding in that document (which I’ve not read in full yet):

Lets just sat that there are people of what used to be called the lower middle class, who are now firmly middle class, with all the attendant snobbery if the lower middle class who now affirm that they are actually working class.

Being an agricultural labourer or a coal miner is working class. A tool maker or a postman is not.

Everyone who paid into a pension scheme while working had tax relief of their contributions which for many kept them (just) out of paying higher rates of tax. Those who were contracted out had even greater benefits (paying far less NI and building up an occupational pension).

QED, the up front tax relief is deferred taxation, which for many means getting higher rate tax relief and then paying a lower rate of tax when you draw that pension.

Over the last 25 years pensioners have received the biggest increase in their incomes (in order to buy their votes) of any group (Plus utterlying eye-wateringly increases in their property wealth).

Why should a pensioner get a stonking (unearned) increase in state pension and then be excused paying tax on the small amount because it has exceeded the personal allowance, whereas a working person is being hit with increased NI contributions (directly or indirectly via increased taxation on the employer) ?.

The solution is simple. Get rid of the triple lock and do not allow the state pension to exceed the personal allowance. QED if the personal allowance is frozen, so should the state pension be.

But you qualify for some really juicy top ups which indirectly open the door to a lot more, which those retiring after April 2016 do not qualify for.

Plus you are more likely to benefit from a final salary related occupational pension than more recent pensioners.

SERPS !!!!.

You definately will have a lot of this, unless you were a member of a contracted-out pension scheme (which will probably be final salary calculated) in which case you will have a nice juicy occ pension which pays you far more than the state pension.

ROFL. Is this a wind-up ?

RUBBISH. No-one has PRE-PAID their state pension. Someone earning £165 per week for 35 years will pay ZERO NI, but still get 35 years NI credits. Someone earning £1 million/week for 35 years will pay the max NI and a shedload of income tax, and presumably far more VAT too, and they will each receive exactly the SAME state pension.

QED the state pension is a classic BENEFIT.

Only the guy earning £1 million/week will have actually 'paid' for his pension (along with the top 25% of taxpayers).

Every time I hear people moaning on TV or radio that they have "paid all their taxes and NI" so should be entitled to that £250,000 of 'free' NHS treatment, I am minded to point out that if these entitled clueless people had paid *enough* tax and NI then we wouldn't have £3 trillion of national debt.

Utter cobblers !. NI was utterly peanuts before the welfare state started in 1947 and there was *NO NHS* prior to that.

And there is no such thing as a pot of money holding NI contributions. There never was and never will be, it is just a notional accounting exercise.

When the welfare state started thousands of people retired that year an immediately drew the new (more generous) state pension at a much LOWER age (65/60) PLUS unlimited free NHS and dental care. The demand on free dentistry was so great that it had to restricted fairly soon after, as prescription charges had to be introduced.

Those people retiring in 1947-48 had paid ZERO NI. Their pension and free NHS was paid for by the taxes and new NI contributions of those in work. For 1948-49 retirees had only paid ONE year of the new NI. It took another 42 years before people were retiring with 44/39 years contributions.

NI "pot of money" my arse, the only pot of money was the massive LOAN that the 1945 Labour government borrowedd from the USA. That was what paid to create and subsidise the UK NHS and welfare state !!!!

MIRAS started being phased out way back in 1988 when multiple loans on the same property (by sharers) was limited to one. The tax rate on the benefit was cut in about 1992 too.

You need to include plenty of villages and towns in South Wales for home-grown examples of the black economy.

The highest concentration of people on PIP (plus free motability car) is Merthyr Tydfil. After the steelworks shut it was too difficult to spend 45 minutes getting to Cardiff and beyond fort work. Much easier to enjoy a life on benefits, while also doing jobs as taxi-drivers, window cleaners, ebay selling, etc etc

Sigh. You don't make 'poor' (*) people wealthy by making 'rich' people poor.

The so-called poor are actually wealthier then their working counterparts because for many, the only way to end up with the same net income that matches their benefits would need an income up to £70K gross. fat chance of that.

The Labour government have abolished Grammar schools and condemned most kids to knife-ridden s***ty comprehensives where the brightest kids are held back by all the disruptive crap-heads.