What do you think of Burnham's plans re inheritance tax?

[JoyousOpalLemur]

He has said in the past that he wants to abolish inheritance tax and replaced it with a social care levy on inherited assets, which will incorporate unused pensions.

I don't totally understand this if I'm honest - I think it means everyone will be dragged into the inheritance tax threshold, but it seems like a fairer tax than what currently exists, and it's there for a purpose (to fund social care).

What do you think?

https://www.independent.co.uk/money/burnham-prime-minister-money-taxes-mortgages-bonds-stamp-duty-b3001078.html

Exactly this!

Yes and elder care is £12 billion of that

People need to understand that every single policy burnham tries to bring in will take more tax off of people and give to the poorer. So ever single working peon will pay more. No matter how he dresses it up, his objective will be to stealth tax the fuck out the British public.

This policy is about the cost of 'social care'.

A better way to fund social care would be to each person to take out an insurance policy to indemnify them for cost.

How would that be enforced, it would be seen as like TV license, unfairly penalising people who can least afford.

Most voters oppose any tax rises that could affect themselves, OP, no matter how sensible, fair and useful they might be.

Well you would, if this became policy?

Very few people need a care home in their old age. Even fewer (as a percentage of the population) need social care as an adult

People would be funding private companies pockets again for something that is statistically unlikely.

Well obviously, Im talking about the current system.

I think I’ll wait to hear what he actually plans.

This is not really true. One third of adults age 65 or more need to move into a care home before they die.

Was that money not already taxed in multiple ways? We already have an absurd tax burden in the country and just add new taxes on money already taxed. We should scrap the whole taxation system and start again with just two taxes: on land and on company profits.

Its about 8% of people in general, there was a long long thread where all the stats were carefully unpicked and explored. People think that very high numbers of people go into care but they dont.

Correction, 65-85 its about 2%, over 85 it rises to between 10 and 15%

It's not just care homes though. Carers visiting at home also costs money. Altogether it costs £21 billion a year. Currently that's split between self funders, and council tax payers. So on the one hand by a tax that is completely regressive and inequitable and on the other by the sick and frail themselves if they during the course of their lives have in total ended up with more than the ridiculously low threshold of £23k to their name.

Yes, but if people are living longer (yay) then more people will be in that 85 year old age group that are most likely to need care. So the care bill is going to rise unless we reduce costs by underfunding care. Which isn't possible (without awful consequences) because salaries are already too low. And there's also people that never entered a care home but probably should have done because they were shuffled from hospital bed to recovery ward to home and back to hospital (because they had deteriorated so fast due to the extended stay in hospital) and then died of an infection.
There's also people that would benefit from more community care and support in their own homes. Which also costs money to do right.
At exactly the same time there are less percentshe if the population working and paying taxes.

I'm happy to forgo some of my inheritance if it means, when I'm older, I'm not scared of getting infirm and having no care options. And I'm happy for my kids to inherit 10%less than they would rather than lose it all.

I think that 21 billion includes adults who need care (LD, MH, physical disabilities).

I don't know that the bill is going to rise, as it goes. Life expectancy is fairly static now and generations below this current elderly one are smaller. But it does need to be funded properly.

I thought life expectancy had gone down!!

I think there's a point at which it gets worse, by 2040 maybe? The problem is, birthrates fell fairly steadily after the baby boom. Therefore as time goes on the ratio of tax payers to people needing care gets slowly smaller. It wasn't a dramatic cliff edge so we aren't entering demographic collapse and the extinction of the human race as some like to claim. But adult care is predicted to become more of a burden than it is now so it's better to have a sensible way to pay for that than wait until the system is breaking down completely.

Or dipped a bit because of COVID. If life expectancy starts to go down substantially then I guess we save money but TBH it will likely be a sign that things have slowly started to go wrong/that poorer people or poorer councils can't afford care needed to extend life and ensure quality of life. That would be bad.

Total local authority adult care expenditure is £32 billion
Long term working age care is £10 billion
Long term post 65 care is £12 billion

Self funders pay £9 billion

There's also a lot of unmet need - one third of social care requests result in no action.

Which people?

Being King, one is exempt from Inheritance Tax. That is just for you little people.

Being King, one is exempt from Inheritance Tax. That is just for the little people.

if you actually live in Poundbury then as an Architect I think you’re already paying anyway

Sorry