When will people realise that pensioners have paid for their state pension.

[notsafeanymore]

Every time there is a debate about the cost of living pensioners get a bashing.
And some have also paid for a private pension.
It's people who have never worked that should be targeted first.
I'm not on about the disabled. It's people who are benefit cheats and have never worked.

That income has already been taxed, though when it was the father‘s income so they don’t get to take two bites of the cherry for the same pie
The only person that hurt hurts is the child

No. It needs to be taxed as income for the other parent. The same way as interest on savings is taxed even though the capital has already been taxed.
We can't keep trotting out 'it will harm the children' as an excuse not to close this expensive loophole. Of course it won't be popular, but why should someone be able to claim full benefits then enjoy limitless top-ups from maintenence and not even pay tax? It's madness.

I can appreciate on small amounts say under £200 it’s neither here nor there but on larger amounts and the person I know gets much more than that I fail to see why they should get benefits in full plus £800 on top- the fact it’s been taxed at maybe £180 doesn’t get rid of the fact the recipient is paying zero tax or NI on an income for not working that’s now bigger than many single full time working mums get who get no or little maintenance . If people aren’t also claiming in full or get small UC top ups - then I don’t care what they get - at the end of the day it’s everyone else paying for situations like this - and to me isn’t fair - I’m social minded , but I think there are limits and it’s encouraging a reliance too on always having these amounts coming in that drops off a cliff once kids hit 18

yes thank you am quite aware of tax brackets and may even earn enough to be affected by it one day. But this was not tax-this was pension contributions and it happened because Pension banding had not been reviewed for years. So more and more people were being dinged for a significantly higher contribution. And it was hard to be fucking grateful when I had less take have pay for a whole fucking year. The only other contact I have had with pensions was when £700 was suddenly deducted one month because of overtime that had been incorrectly classified during lock down when they were begging for extra hours but then did stuff like scheduling a late then an early the next day. I did eventually get it back, but a month later.

So your assumption is that all pensioners get all of these benefits and don’t move out of their homes for any reason ? Maybe, like the attitude towards the disabled, pensioners should just cover themselves with a blanket then sit and wait quietly to die so as not to inconvenience a generation that clearly doesn’t want to do the same as they did when they were working ? Not to mention the benefits and concessions that the generations who came after are still benefiting from.

Current non pensioners are being massively screwed over unless either very high earners or public sector (both of which we are all paying towards.

People are paying say 3-5% 5% of 3500 is 1750 a year. Plus obviously ni to fund nhs and pensions. Then their work are paying x towards it too. Fine but whereas previous generations pensions were final salary or non contribution.
Yes in theory you get tax free but 75% of it is taxable and the limit being the state pension means all of that is taxable.
And now inheritance tax but wasnt when the money was paid in.

But also even if you get the 30/35 years of ni paid in someone else - who may have worked in other countries and has their pensions or just spent the monet or was cash in hand gets the exact same in pension credit.

serps etc worked better as there was an incentive to earn more.
And it was in a person’s own pot
whereas contracting out has probably screwed a lot over.

H is a consultant IT engineer
His close friend is a consultant hospital doctor
They are both top of their career

H has much the better pension deal

But with no guarantees
which is key

I will never understand why younger workers seem to think they are uniquely burdened by paying the pensions of those who have retired.
It is the way it has always worked.
Yes i am aware there are more pensioners to fewer workers but no one is individually having to pay more.
It's just an excuse to attack pensioners again

The welfare bill is going up. Either it's paid for by more taxing (everyone individually paying more) more debt (generation alpha pay much more later on) or cutting spending in other areas (cutting the social safety net etc).
That isn't pensioners fault at all. It's just demographics. But the threads on here about welfare always try to blame it on younger people being lazy, immigration, single mums, what have you. The welfare bill is rising and will continue to rise because the population of people claiming pensions comparative to those of working age has risen and is continuing to rise. Not your fault. But it does cost each individual working age tax payer more.

Can I ask how it costs you more? Have they brought in a "pensioners tax" that I have somehow missed and added it to what we all pay?

You have answered it yourself: it is because there are more pensioners to fewer workers.

Obviously individual taxpayers do not get itemised statements of whose pensions they are paying, but collectively the current generation of workers have a higher pension burden to pay than previous generations.

Whose fault is that would you say?

If 15 working aged people are paying for 5 retired people through tax, that costs a certain amount. If 10 working aged people are paying for 10 retired people through tax they will be paying more. If 5 working aged people are paying for 15 retired people for tax this costs more.

When the papers rage about the welfare bill going up by X amount, if you look into it most of the increase is pensions. This isn't because today's pensions are more profligate/wasteful than in the past. It's because there is proportionately more of them than the working age population than before.

There is no "pensioner tax". However the government has to raise most of it's money through tax (income, National Insurance, VAT). So if part of the outgoings of the government is going up either they have to cut spending in other areas or people have to pay more through tax. Or both.

It's not just the UK working out how to fix this. It's most of the world. And is why conversations about the budget are so heated/fraught and part of the reason Labour have been like a deer in the headlights.

The demographics are no one's fault, but that is not the point. Today's workers are entitled to be annoyed that they are having to fund a pension burden that the generation before them did not, but are benefitting from.

Boomers for not popping out as many children as their own parents
Feminists for not letting women be forced into marriage and into being brood mares like Afghanistan
Doctors/scientists for enabling people to live longer instead of dying of asbestos poisoning 6 years after retirement
The transition from subsistence agriculture meaning that children become an extra mouth to feed rather than a resource

It's no one's fault really. It's just a demographic reality.

It's my fault for living beyond age 66. It's the fault of the NHS for keeping us all going on tablets which didn't exist in grandma's day.
It's the fault of the people who invented the Pill, so families are usually smaller.

In the late 1970s I was working, paying tax and National Insurance. I was paying Income Tax at a significantly higher rate than 20%, I think. All of my peers were in the same boat. I feel that if everyone is in the same boat people don't too much mind. Sadly, in the run up to the 2024 election, neither the Labour party nor the Tory party dared to say that they'd increase Income Tax, for fear they'd lose votes.

Voters over the past few decades who voted for tax cutting parties, voted for selling off council homes, voted for privatisations and demutualisations, voted for Brexit, etc..

I have paid tax for 44 years and am still paying it from my pension (not state).

The only "benefit" I have ever recieved was "family allowance" which was a universal allowance which was given to all families to recognise that having children was a plus.

At no point have I looked at a pensioner or a benefits claimant and thought "I am paying for you".

I'd be happy if I was but I know that most of it is going to tax avoidants, illegal wars, the HOL, Garden Bridges, High speed rail projects that seem never ending and don't actually benefit most tax payers, cronyism and absolute corruption (see the tories)

The reason my money is spaffed on the already rich is because of people like you, gullible people.

Has it not always been the case that current workers are funding a pension burden that the generation before did not, but is benefitting from? Isn't that a feature of the way the scheme is designed?

Many pensioners think that they did this for the generations before them and have a hard time understanding why the current workers won't acknowledge this. By all means argue that the burden is greater or that it's unsustainable, but just saying that they're not willing in principle to continue doing what previous generations did just puts people's backs up.

And I would say to you that you being "annoyed" about pensioners means you really need to get a life quite frankly.

Especially as you seem to think that no one else has ever paid tax but you.

Afaik, self employed people didn’t get final salary or non contribution pensions? DH has been paying into his SIPP for 35 years. He’s never mentioned an alternative, although he does complain that he couldn’t afford the contributions needed to give him a final pension, commensurate with someone in the public sector like a doctor.

Yes, but the key point is that the pension burden per worker is far, far greater now.

All of those things absolutely add to the issue! And there's ways around it, e.g. better regulation of public/private partnerships or windfall taxes on people who disproportionately benefit from such partnerships. Not going to war for stupid reasons, not wasting money on aircraft carriers would save money (although really the money saved should be funnelled back into defense because we need an army/navy)

Family allowance doesn't exist anymore. There was means tested child benefit but that got cut back to only 2 children and removing said cap has been controversial. However, I would argue since we do want there to be a next generation removing the cap is a good thing. And that in general trying toreduce a rising welfare budget by further austerity on the young is counterproducative.

But private pensions are essentially investments and those investments need a body of people working to push them up. State pensions are also paid by the generation working. That doesn't mean that people claiming are leaching. It's part of the social contract arguably that this happens. But pretending that isn't how it works/that there is a big pot of money labelled different for girls you paid into and are now taking out doesn't help

The reality is, as the population ages we need to figure out how to ensure quality of life for retired people is maintained without affecting the quality of life for younger people or hurting the economy. Otherwise you get sucked into a negative doom loop of right wing politics and the blame game as people see their living standards eroded and their money disappearing into tax or inflation. There are lots of ways to do this that aren't about punishing pensioners. Eg

• migration (but as a society we also need to not riot and burn down their homes because then they won't come)
• increase productivity (lots of space for improvement here. The more GDP per hour each working person generated the easier to balance tax versus money for them to spend
• inheritance tax
• more efficiency/less waste of corruption
• gamble the UKs National debt in one single game of all or nothing high stakes poker
• something something AI? Something something Robots? Something about Mars?

In fairness, if you are retired now you paid way less tax than the generations above you did (I think it was 90% during the war and into the 50s) and way less than the generations now are going to need to pay. That's not your fault. It's a result of the post war population boom which meant a large number of working age people (plus Thatcher but that's another issue). But you genuinely never had it so good.

You seem to think this about blame. It isn't.