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.

The generation before them did pay for pensioners though
and with far less ( or Nothing ) in benefits to support them as top ups

As a pp noted. Is there some sort of extra tax that’s been added. I don’t see it in my tax bill.

in fact

Over the last 60 years, the basic rate of UK income tax has dropped from 30% to 20%, while the top rate has fallen dramatically from 70%+ down to 45%. However, "stealth taxes" and frozen thresholds mean many workers face an increased overall tax burden today

. Posting this on again

Over the last 60 years, the basic rate of UK income tax has dropped from 30% to 20%, while the top rate has fallen dramatically from 70%+ down to 45%. However, "stealth taxes" and frozen thresholds mean many workers face an increased overall tax burden today

The 1960s to 1970s: In the 1960s, top earners faced combined income tax rates as high as 90%

Even after sweeping reductions, the top rate of income tax on earned income in the mid-1970s sat at 83%

The basic rate remained relatively high,
fluctuating around 30-33 % through much of the 1970s.

The 1980s and 1990s: Sweeping reforms during this period reshaped the tax code.
The top rate was slashed to 60% and eventually dropped to 40% by the late 1980s, where it stayed for decades.

The basic rate of income tax steadily fell to
25% during the 1980s, and to
20% by 2008.

Present Day: Under the current UK structure, the basic rate remains at 20% and the
higher rate at 40% .
An additional rate of 45% applies to income exceeding £125,140

So I think you’ll see saying pensioners haven’t paid their dues is ill informed

I should have worded it:

"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 level of pension burden that the generation before them did not, but are benefitting from."

It’s all tax wherever it goes and today’s workers are paying less in tax than pensioners before them

Perhaps income tax should go back up to
the basic rates in the 70s of 33-30%
Then everyone is equal
or before that even when it was higher again

It is misleading to look at rates of income tax in isolation. The overall tax burden is currently the highest it has ever been since about 1950.

Most people retirednor on the cusp of retiring today will have been in/entering their peak earning years at about the time that income tax was slashed (the 1980s and 1990s as you mention). In the 60s and 70s when the top rate of tax was 90% they would have been teenagers or quite young adults and it's less likely they would have been higher/top rate tax payers (not impossible but unlikely) and more likely they would have been benefitting from the welfare state paid for by that decades tax payers (the silent generation and the golden generation). I agree that on paper tax is lower now but covered up with hidden taxes. I think since the 1980s we have gotten into a mindset that tax is bad/raising tax has become a political liability and that's harmful because it means we can't have sensible conversations. However, one of those sensible conversations need to be that the economic boom that enabled a period of lower taxes and rapidly increasing living standards was due in part to demographic conditions that no longer exist. So we need a new plan that either involves raising productivity through massive government and private investment, raising income tax or innovative new taxes like land tax, inheritance tax on all etc.

Boomer has become a performative but it describes a real phenomenon that had and has real economic effects. Getting offended won't change that.

Today's 65 year old was not paying a lot of tax in 1975! Think about it...

"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."

You're mixing up the child element of UC with child benefit. Child benefit is the old family allowance which was universal and is is now means tested. But it isn't limited to two children. The child element of UC was. Two different benefits. But I agree that with you that lifting the cap on that benefit was the right thing to do.

"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"

I don't take anything out and won't for 5 years. I'm 62. I am living on my LA pension.

The thing you said about migrants is awful. Do you vote Reform?

How is it?

What war? The Iraqi war?

So I have never paid tax?

That's because they were 14 years old.

I cannot believe the low level of educaton that the young people on this thread appear to have been subjected to.

I’m not offended
Im not a pensioner
My parents have passed
This isn’t personal
I simply don’t agree with people harping on about pensioners didn't pay
When that’s simply not true

Someone age 70 today for example and born 1956 will have been working from
at the earliest 1972
taxes at the basic rate for them were higher for 36 years compared to now.

A man aged 80 now and retiring at 65 paid those higher income taxes for 47 years

This isn’t about being emotional
This is about pure hard financial facts snd
I really don’t think many people were even aware how high income tax used to be

I honestly think people think taxes were just introduced for their own generation
When in fact
They were reduced to the lowest level in 2008

Mentioning women couldn’t even have a bank account in their own name until 1975 would blow their minds aswell

If that is really what you think I am saying, I have no interest in engaging with you.

Er yes
Todays 65 year olds were still at school in 1975
They could leave and start working , on their 16th birthday
Most did

I agree. I’m baffled by the thinking. I’m 59 and have paid tax for 43 years. Why do people think that people our age haven’t earned their pensions. I’ve paid every penny of tax and NI that I’ve been asked to pay. What more was I supposed to do?

Yes, and after they had reached their thirties (when people traditionally start to earn more) that 70 year old would have benefitted from the tax cuts brought in by the Conservatives and continued by Labour. They also would have benefitted from lower house prices (see post war building boom and big government spending in the 50s and 60s funded by higher taxes than they paid). The reason they benefitted was because of

1. Demographics. A lot of people entered the working age population at the same time and greatly outnumbered the older non working populations and the younger non working populations
2. Peacetime dividend. Less money needed to be spent on defence. Especially after 1989
3. Political decisions. Small government and trickle down economics replaced Keynesian economics and replaced a prioritised public spending with reducing the social contract and privatisation.

It's not that I am arguing people in their 60s/70s didn't pay tax. They did. They just happened to be best placed to benefit from a particular set of conditions. Someone born in 1920 had to go through the war and pay for that. That's not the fault of people born after the war. People of working ages now don't benefit from the advantages I listed above. Demographics are different, defence spending will need to increase. This all costs money. It's why overall working age people pay more tax. Because they have to.

Usually minimum wage. They were not paying massive levels of tax on those salaries.

It is NOT that people in their 60s, 70s, 80s didn't pay their way. I am sure you did, I am sure you paid to support the generations above you. But the burden of supporting the generations above you was less because there were more eof you and less of them. Discussions around the rising care and pension bill etc are not (predominantly) people saying older people didn't pay tax. It's about the fact the calculations now are different than in the past.
Even the 80 year old someone mentioned who had been paying taxes for 47 years will have been claiming out for 15 years. So that's a ratio of 2:1 working:not working. You would have to have paid a massive amount in tax to make that make sense. And he wouldn't have been paying 1970s tax rates his whole life because when the tax rate was reduced it reduced for all ages.

Again, NOT the 80 year olds fault! But the chances are he ended up taking out more than he paid in and when that's happening more than it isn't, that causes a potential issue which needs to be addressed somehow.

Not all pensioners get 12k!

Every single pensioner has worked and “paid into” the state pension??

Not necessarily. Some might have paid enough contributions to get themselves a State Retirement Pension which is not the 100% amount, because they haven't paid the maximum required. If they don't have income from property or loads of savings, and their income is below a certain level, they can apply for Pension Credit, which is the top-up payment for pensioners.

You’re ignoring all the indirect taxes that have risen or introduced . Vat rate more than doubled, stamp duty, fuel duty, expanded vat, insurance premium tax, air taxes, landfill taxes, fuel, tobacco, alocohol, etc. you can’t pick one tax and say taxes have fallen. That’s before student loan repayments which is another tax.

Yes some get more!