Pensions and politics.

[Isitmebut]

The Coalition has been accused by Labour (and others) in yesterdays Budget (and previous budget improvements in the State Pension via ‘the triple lock’), of cynically courting the ‘grey’ vote, implying that our pensioners lived life on the hog under Labour – which may explain why the next Labour government wants to tax pensions, AGAIN, albeit for the wealthy – but as we know, once a cash cow is identified by a (continually overspending) Labour administration, there is always tax creep to the less wealthy.

The Mansions Tax proposed by both Labour and the Lib Dems, probably on homes valued over £2 million, will badly hit home asset rich, income poor, elderly/pensioners - that if forced to sell, will still provide over £140k Stamp Duty (7% band) to the Treasury – in a guaranteed raid on those a socialist government would still call ‘wealthy’, but arguably could be called a ‘bed room tax’ for the ‘rich’.

But Labour has a bit of recent form attacking the elderly; the measly rises in the State Pension over 10-years of ££££quango plenty, may not be relevant to those in £2 million homes staying within them, but didn’t they throw a 72p rise at pensioners one year to pay for their ‘costs of living’ pressures, when annual Council Tax rises would have more than wiped those out?

Furthermore how many of those now home asset rich, income poor elderly will be income poorer due to Brown/Balls Labour raid on Private pensions they were not told about before the 1997 General Election?

Even before the 300-year record low interest rates/Quantitative Easing affecting the annual income from pension annuities – pension actuaries calculated that Labour had cost pensions over £100 billion and closed many Private Sector final salary schemes.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266662/The-man-stole-old-age-How-Gordon-Brown-secretly-imposed-ruinous-tax-wrecked-retirements-millions.html

And this was the result on the Private Pensions final salary provisions, due to the actions of a Labour government that thought in the late 1990’s private pensions were well funded/over provisioned and were ripe of socialist envy pickings.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10698432/Final-salary-pensions-10-times-more-common-in-public-sector.html


Meanwhile those without adequate pensions themselves, face an overly large national pension liability of currently over £1.3 trillion, £1 trillion totally unfunded and has to come out of annual budgets when due - on top of the current £1.265 trillion National Debt - thanks to another bad Brown choice of increasing the Public Sector/Quango payroll by over 1 million from 1997 to 2010.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14134847
“Public sector pension liabilities top £1 trillion”

[motown3000]

Itis. You are quite correct and that is actually a "Tax" as opposed to a "Reduction in Benefit" being Labelled as a Tax.

[motown3000]

Incidentally Itis, I have just seen figures that show a Labour Member of Parliament can be Elected with as little as 14,000 Votes. A Conservative Candidate would need closer to 21,000 votes on average. This is not Democratic and gives Labour a huge start.

Why can't Constituencies contain the same number of persons ,( I understand about Migration E.T.C) from certain Inner City Areas, in that case just take a set number of people from another Constituency .

Every Constituency should have the same Number of Residents Liable to vote.

I don't think that "Labour" would like that and we would hear about remote parts of Scotland losing 10 seats or so ( For the sake of Equality in Votes). The Left like the Inbuilt advantage in the Electoral system, yet still they moan about Unfairness .

Sorry For Changing the thread Itis...

[Isitmebut]

Cameron proposed both 'fairer' boundaries and a reduction in the number of MP's, but I guess the prospects of a perpetual socialist administration/coalition swanning around the EU from 2015 onwards was too good an opportunity to pass up. lol
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jan/29/lib-dems-labour-reject-constituency-review

[Isitmebut]

Back to pensions, arguably the 'raid' on dividend tax relief that affected to many people from 1997/8 on, AND increased the costs to the taxpayer of providing Public Sector Final Salary pensions as any provisions made by the State would have included equities - also encouraged people to BTL property as a personal pension.

Yes those reaching retirement age might take larger cash lump sums from their existing pot, but how many more people will be encouraged by this new flexibility to enter private pension schemes as alternative investment yields fall e.g. property?

Furthermore, if I had bought a property to let, had a huge profit via a purchase from the heady days from 2008-9 when in many places properties fell (with few transactions) over 20%, I'd look to sell up and reinvest in a pension, less CGT paid, but with tax relief when contributing to a pension. Just a thought.