to hope the government has the guts to tax WEALTHY pensioners more

[ReallyTired]

The Fabian society has suggested that wealthy pensioners pay more tax.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22220345

Some how I can't see a conservative wanting to tax wealthy pensioners more when they all vote Tory.

I find it unfair that pensioners with an income more the average family's income get free bus buses, winter fuel allowance, TV licence as well as paying less tax and national insurance. It is about time that the the wealthy pensioners took their share of the pain of the cuts.

I am in favour of well off pensioners having free bus passes, winter fuel allowance as these things encourage independence and improve health. I would like to see the money for these things clawed back by WEALTHY pensioners paying more income tax.

Expat you do realise of course many pensioners are themselves disabled due to old age. Mobility issues, breathing problems, heart conditions, deafness, blindness, mental issues are all disabilities in one form or another.

So NO I don't think ANY disabled person should be made to move form their home or into another area and sorry that to me includes a great many pensioners.

BTW I really am getting sick and tired of posts showing such contempt for the elderly.

MY DAD is 82 and still works and still pays tax he DOES NOT GET HB, but people still seem to think he should move out of his 3 bed HA house so that some family on all the benefits they can get their mitts on can have it at a knock down rent paid partly with HB that my Dad is paying towards with his tax - well that aint going to happen even if there were 20 smaller properties for him to move into

Trees then you would have benefited from the subsequent housing boom which is one of the reasons why younger generations won't be able to buy and which has added to the wealth of baby boomers.Tbh I suspect if they could choose most youngsters unable to buy would choose your scenario.

Question. Those younger pensioners in expensive houses and living expensive lifestyles.When the time comes and they need care but have no savings left should they be made to sell to pay for it or should the present day tax payer foot the bill?Baring in mind the shortfall in NI the older generations have paid whether it be their fault or not.

Would be interested to see the various answers as I can't get my head round it.

Oh and re disabled pensioners.I'm not sure large council houses with rooms they don't use and can't heat,stairs etc would be the best option.My grandma ended up disabled and had to sell up her beloved house and buy a sheltered ground floor flat.My parents had to look to the future and downsize from their beloved house(hoards of stairs and heating bills would eventually be a problem).An awful lot of pensioners end up doing this by choice because not to do so makes life more uncomfortable than it needs to be.

Oh and re white goods they are waaaay cheaper these days,you can also pick up second and for peanuts which people do.Facebook and e-bay facilitates a lot of cut price purchases.A lot of our furniture are cast offs from my parents(they like their DIY). As a said previous dish washer not a priority for me.It is wrong to say youngsters are out buying white goods willy billy,an awful lot are still at home because they can't even afford to move out.

Question. Those younger pensioners in expensive houses and living expensive lifestyles.When the time comes and they need care but have no savings left should they be made to sell to pay for it or should the present day tax payer foot the bill?

you do pay for part of your care home fees already from your estate on your death. they also take most of your state pension when you are alive and leave you with pocket money.

Oh FFS. I am so fed up with this mentality to punish those who have worked hard or were successful in life . If they all paid there fair share of taxes before retirement they deserve their free tv licenses, bus passes etc. just as much as those who aren't as well off. they probably paid more tax too

'Oh FFS. I am so fed up with this mentality to punish those who have worked hard or were successful in life . If they all paid there fair share of taxes before retirement they deserve their free tv licenses, bus passes etc. just as much as those who aren't as well off.'

Because no one else works hard, pays taxes and is successful in life. This mentality that you are somehow due some sweeties from the government for making a living is shocking, as if living in a place with the amazing infrastructure and peace that allows all of us to go about our business largely unmolested isn't the greatest of boons, oh, no, we have to be given sweeties, too, like children, as a reward for being lucky enough to live in such a place.

expat - the consequence of getting rid of the cheap sweeties is that you will have some people paying in all their lives and others taking from the system all their lives.

do you think that is sustainable?

'expat - the consequence of getting rid of the cheap sweeties is that you will have some people paying in all their lives and others taking from the system all their lives.

do you think that is sustainable?'

a) Those sweeties are not cheap b) The idea of government as a pay-in/get out system is fine, if you have to realise the greatest 'get out' we have is an amazing infrastructure and peaceful society that allows us to go about making a living trouble-free and that the cost of this is enormous. Holding out the hand for sweeties when you're already getting the state pension which most of us in our 30-40s know will not exist when we get to our 60s or 70s is entitlement culture at its finest c) is it sustainable to pay out state pensions for 30+ years when it was designed to be drawn for an average of 3-5 years with a certain percentage dying before they claim it at all? NO.

expat I agree. Those people who have worked hard all their lives and paid tax have had the benefits already: they have spent their earnings and seen the tax spent on making the country a place they want to live in (with police, NHS and welfare). There is not enough money for them to now carry on taking for 30 years after giving up working at the rate they currently are. You can't say "I worked for 42 years (18 - 60 for a woman) so I want free money from the government to live a live at a higher standard than the working young for the next 30 years. The economics don't stack up.

fasterstronger that should not be a consequence: steps should be taken to ensure that everyone is expected to pay in for most of their lives (assuming they are not medically unable to work in which case we should be happy to live in a country that supports them all their lives).

Look at different years' spends on pensions by government:

www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2010UKbn_12bc1n#ukgs302

in 1993, the Govt paid £35 billion out in pensions. By 2010, this had risen to £113 billion.

This year the tipping point will be reached where the average taxpayer will be paying more out to pay for public sector pensions than they can afford to do for their own. Madness.

Most pensioners have had a pretty tough life. Despite that I would be in favour of abolishing the £250 a year fuel allowance. It is not a huge sum and we have to make cuts.

Like someone mentioned above there is never much point in these inter generational comparisons. We can all make a case of oh woe is me it is so harder now. On houses which seems to be the biggest bug bear of the 20 something mothers on mumsnet do remember that if you go back most people say 90% never ever owned a house and never expected to. Now in the 1930s some cheaper housing did start to be built which some could buy but by no means all and Thatcher made council houses available to buy but houses were never dirt cheap. When we moved to London prices were double at least an in a fairly grotty outer bit of London than where we moved from in the 80s. It was very very difficult to buy when childcare was 50% of each of our net salaries to pay for at the same time and basic rate tax was 33%, no childcare help, no nurseries, no maternity leave - I was not even entitled to 6 weeks at 90% pay so used 2 weeks of holiday. It was not some glorious golden time where you could pick up a house for a week's wages. It was very hard. My parents waited nearly 10 years after marriage to have children to be able to afford a house. My grandfather waited until he was nearly 40 to marry as he could not afford a wife until then.

Yet those of us with children who are graduating etc also know it is difficult in other ways today too. Life is never easy. Every generation may go through wars, recessions and negative equity periods, falling and then rising house prices over a 40 year adult life.

What women can do these days which in earlier years was harder is work very hard full time, earn money in all kinds of professions previously forbidden to them so that they can help their children in due course with part of house deposits if housing is the biggest issue or whatever it might be.

Picking on wfa and free bus passes for wealthy pensioners is a mistake simply because the costs are minimal they are not a major drain on resources, tv licence doesn't kick in till 75 so not everyone gets it.

It feels to me like people want to punish pensioners for what we are enjoying, better health, better health care, more chance of seeing our children live to adulthood. All these things have costs. No one could have envisaged the ave age of death rising the way it has.

Someone said all final salary schemes should be stopped but all those i know on final salary are from private companies so not paid by the state so that would actually hit the state because tax is paid on them.

The point about white goods is that things pretty much taken for granted these days were either non existent or extortinately expensive.

Some costs have not changed in the last 20 years, mortgage payments on a first house are about the same due to fall in interest rates. Childcare has not really increased in price due to more availability and the cost of white goods has stayed pretty static too. Petrol has risen stupidly which has a knock on effect on things like food. Each generation has it hard in some way but we need to find a way to go forward without significantly affecting those who can not even try to change their situation.

'Most pensioners have had a pretty tough life.'

Diddums. Billions of people have tough lives.

undercover steps should be taken to ensure that everyone is expected to pay in for most of their lives (assuming they are not medically unable to work in which case we should be happy to live in a country that supports them all their lives).

I agree.

'Like someone mentioned above there is never much point in these inter generational comparisons. We can all make a case of oh woe is me it is so harder now.'

I so agree!

Undercover and faster how do you plan to do that when we can't manage 100% employment.

National Insurance is not tax it is insurance which pays out in certain circumstances until 'term' which is when you stop paying the premiums and get the benefits-in this case pension and free prescriptions

No that's wrong. That was how it was sold by politicians 60 years ago, but ever since its introduction the link between what you pay and what you get has been watered down. Today it is virtually non-existent. It is nothing like say car insurance, where what you pay in is extremely highly correlated with what you are expected to cost.

To illustrate what I mean

1. Your NI contributions make no difference to what NHS care you are entitled to. (NI was originally sold as paying for the NHS.)
2. For someone who has no money and needs benefits, it makes little or no difference to the amount you get. All your NI buys you (if you are unemployed but not skint) is the basic amount of jobseekers allowance for six months. That is a negligible cost compared to what is paid out to the skint, regardless of whether they have paid any NI.
3. People get pensions if they have enough NI credits. If they don't get a pension they may get tax credits which gives them income in the same ball-park, so actually paying NI has achieved close to bugger-all advantage. Also you can get NI credits without paying NI, if you have a low salary or receive child benefit. By being a company director who pays himself dividends on top of a low salary, and later on the parent who receives child benefit, I will be entitled to full basic state pension, despite having paid close to bugger-all in NI through-out my working life.

In short, while there are vestigial traces of the original idea that what you get should be linked to paying in, in practise there's hardly any link.

(Incidentally, I'm not advocating that todays pensioners should overnight start paying the same rate of tax. It would be unfair to radically alter the system overnight, when people have planned their lives on the basis of the existing system. I think convergence should be slowly phased in over 30 years. So anyone currently over 50 will hardly be affected.)

That is one reason I would like NI abolished entirely and we move to non contributory basic benefits for those without and on the breadline. We could abolish the state pension too and have people make their own provision with some very basic benefits for those in need, obviously giving a lot of notice so people can make adequate other arrangements.

The new pension of £140 a week will require 35 years of contributions, I think. I fear that if you never pay an NI contribution because you never work your pension credit and housing benefit will take you up to the £140 a week mark. Thus a life of idleness at the state's expense may be just as fruitful as 35 years of labour.

When the time comes and they need care but have no savings left should they be made to sell to pay for it or should the present day tax payer foot the bill?

But you're not one of those tax payers, though, square, so it won't be you who's footing the bill anyway.

londonman, I disagree with your figures. using www.incometaxcalculator.org.uk and 40k income:

pensioner receives 34k
non pensioner 30k

I am comparing a pensioner on 40K with someone on a salary of 36K. 36K salary has 4K employers NI which makes the cost of employment 40K. Put 36K into that calculator and you get 27K take-home for employee from a salary cost to employer of 40K.

(If anyone believes that the fact the employer pays the employers NI means you shouldn't take it into account, I can show you how to redesign the tax system so that income taxes and NI for the employee are zero, with payroll taxes for the employer increased, but in reality what the employer pays out and what the employee has left after tax are both unchanged. I believe what matters is the economic substance, a contractual salary of 36K is a 40K cost to an employer that results in a 27K benefit to the employee, the difference going to the government. Labelling the difference an employee or employer tax, or splitting it between the two as the current system does, makes no difference to the economic substance. The fact that gross salary is the anchor point for tax calculations doesn't mean it should be the reference point for assessing the economic substance of what is going on.)

Erm I always have been, (bar the last 4 and a half months) and in a few months I will be again all being well until my 80s.

I have never stopped paying NI.

My Dp's money is my money,I have worked hard to facilitate him paying his 40% tax so think I can have a view thanks on how it's spent during the brief period I'm contributing in a different way.

Oh and what Expat said.

I have worked hard to facilitate him paying his 40% tax...

I pay 40% tax. My OH pays 45% (was 50%) tax.

The fact your husband pays tax doesn't mean you are contributing to anything other than your own household.

And what's this about '4 and a half months'? You said up thread that you'd taken 5 years (!) off.

By the time I go back I will have had 5 years off,I am job hunting which I started after I had 4 years off.

I had 3 babies pretty much in one go,most women have their time off spread out,I've had it one chunk -so what!

Having 3 under 15 months it was pretty much impossible for me to go back to teaching straight away with dp doing his job.He could have taken a pay cut to accommodate me working however the nation would have been no better off tax wise.

People have periods out of work for all sorts of things- illness,disability,maternity,studying,caring etc,etc

So basically you're saying nobody who has had any time out at any point can have an opinion on taxes.So does that mean they shouldn't vote either in your view given that voting is based on having an opinion most often on how tax is spent?

Governments have often looked at merging tax and NI but it is very complicated and each time they have backed off. It is a minefield.

There is a myth that the UK is full of very wealthy pensioners living the life of Riley when in fact many only have the basic state pension and I think the average public sector pension in payment is about £7000 a year so they are hardly living it up.

My father put all his money into pensions and then worked full time to 77 and died at 79. His dementia care at home 24/7 cost him £130,000 a year and he died just as his life savings ran out so not much of a burden on the state really and he would not have wanted to be.

Oh and you can add part time workers and those on minimum wage to my list too as the vast majority won't be paying tax either and only NI which I have always paid.

Square you keep saying you're still paying NI? How are you doing this when you are unemployed. Do you mean the NI credits gained via CB? Or are you paying Class 2 and Class 4 (self-employed)?