Potentially, another national insurance tax increase to pay for social care

@Badbadbunny I have a family member who actually does want this! It’s openly talked about! For most of us, we do want DC to be where the bests careers are. Taking less and staying around parents isn’t what they expect, but some do. It’s also a cultural thing. Look at who goes to some unis and live at home! Often the women in protective cultures. What will they be expected to do after they have had dc? Look after their elders!

If I have a poor future in terms of health and not enjoying anything, I would love to do the equivalent of going to Switzerland. We do extend life beyond reasonable endurance. It’s not all about drugs either. No drug can help the bedridden frail!

I disagree. Human greed is human greed, no matter how much money is involved.

Oh, and this idea that other cultures have kind caring relatives to look after the elderly isn't even true. They are also run to the ground with it. I've seen elderly women with dementia tied to a chair screaming in other cultures as this was the only way family could manage her care.

Families are fragmented. Children are encouraged to go off to Uni, but can't return to live and work at home because the decent jobs are centralised in London and a handful of other large cities, hence the brain drain away from the regions. You can't "care" for your elderly parents if you live and work in Hemel Hempstead but your family home was in Ulverston! Not many financial services, top legal, top financial or top engineering jobs in Ulverston for the child and their spouse! Elderly parents won't want to move to live with or closer to their children in a new/unknown location. Even more pronounced where the children emigrate for decent jobs etc to US, Canada, Australia or Dubai! No decent parent would want their parent to be stuck in a run down region of the UK doing minimum wage work when they've a degree and could be having a highly successful career doing what they studied for, just so that they'd be close to care for them in their old age!

I'm not taking about one family member I'm talking about the whole family. In actual fact I've told my daughters to use my home to pay for my care as its only fair that if people go into residential care or need substantial home care that it's not all left to the taxpayers.

Could do.
Ive read on here that being a carer is thought to reduce your own life expectancy by six years though.

Because those with estates over £2m ensure that by the time they die, their estates are no longer that size. They give away some assets, they spend some money, they invest in businesses to get business property relief, some even make large charitable donations, etc etc.

The statistics are skewed BECAUSE people who are liable for huge IHT liabilities ensure that they're not!

If IHT wasn't a ridiculously high flat rate 40%, there'd be less incentive for those with higher estates to plan for IHT, and so more estates would be larger as at date of death and more IHT would be raised overall.

It’s an answer to the pp question. Of course culturally we haven’t embraced it as much

I wouldn’t go for the other options suggested in the pp

No Thankyou. All the family carers women I know who are in an elderly member caring role have ended up on antidepressants.
The wants and needs of people at the end of their lives don't trump others in the prime of theirs.
It's not what I'd want for my adult children.

That effectively means woman care. And it’s impossible for someone who needs 24/7 care/supervision.

The thresholds for individual contribution for paid care should be reduced. So currently I think you can have around £23k and taxpayers start to subsidise you. Around £14k and you get even more financial help. Why so high? Take monies down to the last £5k before any help kicks in, enough for a funeral and use the rest.

To go by earlier comments there is a lot of waste in the NHS and a lot of profit in the private care sector.

Possibly bringing social care under the NHS umbrella and - one hell of a caveat - doing it right - would save a decent amount of money. But do we trust anyone with such a task?

If working young and middle aged people were prepared to look after their own elderly relatives like a lot of other countries do then it wouldn't be needed. They don't though they abandoned them to the cold, hunger and neglect so Social Services have to step in. I agree don't increase NI. Raise the tax threshold to £15,000 and increase income tax by 5p.

Family care

Some cultures do this more

Another option if we don't want to fork out for elderly care, which let's face it, nobody does, not even the dead, is to come at it from the other side and try to reduce the costs.

For one and actually nothing to do with the price, more of a moral issue. We need to stop extending the end of life period, were people are living in pain and distress, for as long as we possibly can. Nobody benefits from this cruelty (well, I suppose drug companies do) and instead of letting illnesses like flu take people living in constant terror because of dementia and constant pain from multiple other health conditions we aggressively treat so they can continue suffering for as long as possible. No way is this cruelty happening to me.
A side affect is that it'll save money.

We could 'warehouse' our elderly. Keep them drugged up in dormitories. Personally I think this is a horrible option and I for one would rather pay a big chunk of IHT to avoid this.

We could force the young do some sort of national service looking after the elderly. After all, we out number them and can vote to make them do it. I personally like this even less then the 'warehouse' option though and would rather live drugged up in a dormitory than force this on our young. I feel my generation have fucked over our young people enough already.

Any other ideas for cutting costs?

The number of estates worth over £2 million is even smaller.

@Badbadbunny Yes, that’s correct so planning matters to those of us who want to minimise tax.

Thanks, @TizerorFizz . I had forgotten that.

What people don't realise is that the residence nil rate band tapers away with estates over £2m, so those with larger estates are back to having only £325k of a threshold (or doubled if spouse's exemption also available). The number actually eligible for a £1m exemption is smaller than you think.

@poetryandwine It’s not. You can be exempt for up to £1m depending on financial circumstances. We certainly are. You must leave everything to your spouse and meet the criteria set out by the government. However I’m not saying this might not change.

If you have circa £1m you won’t be paying much IHT.

I didn’t say that. I said that’s what they’ll get tax free. It’s a bit rich to accuse someone of rudeness when they get frustrated because you’ve failed to read their posts properly and then misrepresent them.

@TizerorFizz the IHT on an estate of £1M is £140K. Whether one regards that as a significant sum depends on one’s net worth and how one feels about paying it depends on one’s values.

I am much more concerned with the possibilty/probability that society as a whole would reject both the notion of modest annual social care insurance premiums and a very modest IHT on all pensioner estates. Even an extra few billion would be something, and the principle is sound. Cliff edges in general are problematic, I think.

@Blossomtoes
I think you are somewhat rude, but never mind. If you have circa £1m you won’t be paying much IHT.

We have given to dc in their 20s. We aren’t waiting to die before they get anything, I was 68 when DM died. Inheriting when you are older usually means you pass it down straight away. Getting a healthy sum in your 20s is more useful in this day and age and we will continue to give and we are actively planning to reduce IHT liability. As most with DC do.

I wrote earlier that I support your idea of a broadly applied IHT, but I think this is an optimistic model based on my very cursory searches and guesses.

Is this mean individual wealth or the mean estate at death? ONS says wealth decreases steadily after age 64, and the mean is likely to be significantly higher than the median.

The wealthy pensioners are mostly already paying IHT and someone said that’s only 5% of estates above £325K pp or £650K per couple. So what are the true mean and median? The 5% statistic, which I have frequently heard, suggests a much lower figure.

If we suppose the mean pensioner estate is £250K pp, which still seems high in this light, 5% is just £12,500. Excepting those who pay normal IHT and ignoring the issue of bandings, this brings in around £7B, and I don’t think it is politically palatable: it is Theresa May’s Death Tax.

To make the concept politically viable I think you need very, very low bandings and then the revenue is minimal.

I would like to be wrong - I would like for everyone to accept that we need to pay a social care tax/insurance either annually or at death.

You’ve misread what I said. Try again:

We have kids - four of them. Quite honestly if a tax free windfall of £250k, plus 60% of anything over that isn’t enough for them we’ve gone badly wrong with our parenting. We’ve already helped with house purchase, three of ours own homes and the fourth sees home ownership as a tie they don’t want.

I’ll put it more simply. Our kids will get a quarter of a million each tax free (care home fees permitting). If that isn’t enough for them our parenting is fucked.