To think that older, wealthier people should be paying more tax and NI than younger?

[Creambun2]

So various suggestions, which will probably come to nothing, that young people should pay less tax and national insurance than than older people, presumably with a links to actual incomes maintained.

What do you think? I am in favour as I think that young people are being done over really. Unaffordable housing, educations expenses etc etc.

Of course according to many boomer types this is all their fault and they have no money for housing due to buying a coffee and having a phone

any pensioner still paying tax is still contributing to the NHS.

I doubt there'd be any left over towards the NHS once the emergency services, roads, public transport, fuel allowance, benefits, and all other public services used by the pensioner have been paid for.

I'm livid that I'll have spent my working life supporting pensions for the current pensioners who say they are entitled a pension and free healthcare simply because they paid their stamp for those same pensioners to not give a shiny shit that when I reach pension age I won't enjoy the same benefits for my lifetime, despite having paid the same 'stamp' myself.

Same here. Exactly why people say the current generation of pensioners have pulled up the drawbridge behind them. Today's workers have to work for a few years longer to get their state pension. Tomorrow's workers may not even get a state pension. Yet today's and tomorrow's workers are paying a higher rate of NIC than today's pensioners did.

At the very least, the 2% NIC levied on high earners should also be applied to pensioners. The rationale for the 2% was "to save the NHS" by an additional levy on top of the basic maximum NIC (idea being that the workers had already paid enough normal NIC so this extra was a kind of levy on top of their basic responsibility).

Still no one has given any reason as to why those workers over pension age aren't paying NIC on their wages, nor why people with occupational pensions (deferred wages) aren't paying NIC on their occupational pensions. Both are simple to administer as they are paid using the normal payroll/paye system so simplicity itself to either create a new 2% nic rate on occupational pensions and wages for those over retirement age, or to just charge normal NIC on it.

We are reaping the costs of a whole generation of people who were enabled to retire at a young age and then live for a further 30 years or more with expensive health needs at the end part of their lives.

There are a lot of retirees sitting on huge pots of wealth from house price accumulation and inheritance.

There are businesses still able to avoid paying a fair rate of tax.

We can't keep expecting people of working age to alone foot the increasing tax needed to care for retirees and fund public services, when wealth is hoarded elsewhere. There needs to be a tax on assets and people who live or own property or businesses in the U.K. should be forced to pay tax here.

Blimey OP! This is the most bonkers one yet!

A tax on assets iheart? Why? Interest only loans for me ever then. Why would anyone want to "own" a thing? Spend spend spend for me then

Actually, IHeartNiles, quite a few of those people who took early retirement were heavily encouraged to do so to make way for younger staff to be taken on or promoted in the days when unemployment was running at 10% or so. Getting rid of expensive senior people on defined benefit pensions at 55 was another way unscrupulous companies could manipulate their balance sheets without doing anything illegal.

I would support abolishing NI entirely and just having a universal income (and no benefits at all) whetehr you work are retired or whatever. Or merging tax and NI to 33,3% which about the current lowest tax adn employee NI rate and making that the basic rate tax paid on pensions (yes the old would be hit, sorry) and also making that the corporation tatx rate rather than 19% because we would also abolish employer NI (which might also make emplotyers hire more people). If corporation tax and income tax were both 33.3% then there would be less incentive for people to put money through a company. We could make capitals gains tax 33.3% too (but allow for inflation as we used to in working out the true "gain" to be taxed). Ideally 33.3% could be the top income tax rate but we would probably have to keep the 47% upper tax/NI rate and 42% upper tax and NI rate for now.

Every time the Government over 30 years have looked at if they could merge tax and national insurance however they have given up as they think it is too hard. The lower limit to pay NI is about £7300 and it going to £11,000 for tax so we now have a massive difference there too. It just gets more and more complex.

It is also time to abandon the triple lock on pensions. How about linking pension increases to the public sectot pay increase? If nurses etc are expected to manage with 1% why shouldn‘t pensioners?

Oldsu you make some very valid points about pension credit and I agree there are, as ever, anomalies. However the point seems to be that it could be made to work if the will was there

Still no one has given any reason as to why those workers over pension age aren't paying NIC on their wages

Perhaps because the only real answer is that seniors wouldn't like it - and since they vote in large numbers no government wants to risk offending them?

Terrible idea. Age shouldn’t come into it. Taxation should be based on ability to pay.

Age alone doesn’t mean you have any increased ability to pay.

Right now it’s mainly income based. Turning it to account for assets too is more problematic due to housing here. Some sort of land tax often gets floated here but that’s never going to happen while a few very powerful people own the bulk of the country.

If we 1. Closed the loopholes that allow vast corporations to have sweatheart deals/pay very little tax (all legal, not moral.) and 2. Spent it more effectively we might get somewhere.

It's time to go after tax avoiders.

I was born in the 60's, no benefits so both parents worked, no childcare as there wasn't any and so my dad did nights and my mum worked days and they worked it out between them. Hard life meant that my Dad died at 67. He was brought up and abused in childrens homes since his parents committed suicide when he was a small boy. My Mum was an older child in a large family who lived through the war which saw an older brother killed and was sent out to work and had to hand in her pay packet to her parents. Got married and lived in a mouse infested flat when my eldest brother was born.

Massive inflation in the 70s that their pay didn't keep up with, we had very little to start with but often went hungry and cold despite their best efforts. I left school and went straight to work as the income was needed for the house. Not an easy task given that I left school during the worst unemployment levels ever seen in this country. It couldn't be afforded for any of us to go to Uni.

I've worked and paid tax and NI for 35 years so far and still have another 16 to go before I am entitled to a state pension. Yes I own my own home but I struggled and scrimped and saved and went hungry and sacrificed other things to do so. We rare hoping to use the equity to give our children a better start than we had.

But fine yes, make us pay more tax than everyone else. My view is that we should all be paying more tax as a proprortion of our income and other things should be done regarding housing.

However if we just managed to stop people avoiding tax (and these are usually the wealthy) then it would make an enormous difference. I think that most normal working individuals (regardless of the home ownership) pay proportonally more tax than the wealthy as they have little choice than to pay it snce it is deducted at source and they don't have £££ stashed away.

I don't understand the entitlement of younger people.
Yes, houses are way more expensive now than they were.
Yes, university fee's are higher than they were.

That's how it is, work hard, earn money, enjoy life as best you can. No one owes you anything.

@snash

Yes it's totally entitled to expect there to be affordable housing.
So rude and entitled, I mean what's the problem with having to pay rent to pay off the previous generations second mortgages.
In my day everyone had to eat slop and gruel and they were grateful for it! Never did me any harm. If they don't like it why don't they just EARN MORE MONEY. Stupid poor people don't they know if they just earnt more money they would be able to buy a house like what we did.

I think pensioners should pay NI once their income is over a certain amount. This would really boost NHS funds. Pension Credit is the biggest con going. People not declaring their savings. I know somebody who frittered away tens of thousands from a house sale and various daft investments and is now on PC. All rent paid for by the state and no worries about expensive repairs.

I think 'entitlement' (whatever that means) is very commonly found in the retired generation. 'I paid in', for example, is a statement of entitlement.

"That's how it is" is very defeatist. Easy to say it when you are on the winning side.

I wonder about these older people with that attitude, don't they have children that they care about? Do they think their children are lazy and feckless?

Pension Credit is the biggest con going. People not declaring their savings. I know somebody who frittered away tens of thousands from a house sale and various daft investments and is now on PC. All rent paid for by the state and no worries about expensive repairs.

Do you say that about all benefits then as all have a small element that cheat or is it just pensioners you are targeting.

Hang on a minute, was the OP actually being serious?

Yes, becasue when I was young there was a magic cheap house tree.

Let all the people on the bottom half of the wealth tree all fight amongst themselves about who should pay more while the rich are laughing up their sleeves.

I think what people are trying to say is that yes, some things are more difficult for young people but equally the older generations had other things to cope with which were equally as difficult. It's all relative.

And yes, I care about my children and want them to have a better start than I did, but they will still have to work hard and make sacrifices for their future the same way that their Dad and I had to.

why don't some people understand that it doesn't matter how much you sacrifice, a large majority of the younger generation cannot afford a home.

Depends where they want to live whoop. That issue however isn't necessarily resolved by people paying more tax though is it? I appreciate that govt could use extra taxes to pay builders/councils to build more affordable homes but I think its a bigger issue that needs more than one method of solving.

Interest rates are at an all time low so mortgages are certainly more affordable that they were when I was buying in the 80s. It's the price of housing and the amount of deposit that's the issue. Supply and demand is a factor as is people buying investment properties, maybe there sjould be a cap on the profits allowed? A cap on rents as a proportion of investment spend? I don't know, I'm not an economist, I st in the middle of Income Distribution in the UK so neither wealthy or poor in terms of income. I'm happy to pay more tax but unfortunately given that a quarter of the wealth in this country is owned by the top 1% of the population, the action needs to be targeted higher. I also don't think that we should be abusing people that have contributed all their life both by taxes and raising tax payers.

There are undoubtably people who could make more effort to support themselves rather than relying on handouts but they are a drop in the ocean compared to the income lost from wealthy people avoiding tax.

I assume near the jobs wax.

Of course we have a issue with the 1% & tax but that's a global issue so cannot be solved by one country.

I don't agree that all older people should pay more tax. But NI contributions & wealth needs to be looked at.

FWIW I'm old (30s) & have property & ok income. But I think expecting the young to pay for pensions they are unlikely to see or a NHS that won't be free at the point of entry when they are old is deeply unfair.

But taxing people per age is not the way to go about making the system fair at all...

I'm in my 50s and suspect that I've been paying in for the last 35 years and that it's unlikely I'll see anything from it either. There are loads of things people are currently benefitting from that I didn't, such as help with childcare costs and things that my parents may have benefitted from that I don't get (can't think of any).

I definitely want as good a future as possible for my children, they will already be paying proprtionally a lot less tax than I did when I was young due to lower tax rates and higher threasholds.

I just did an inflation calculator and the equivalent of my salary from when I bought my first home is roughly half of what the living wage would be and the value of my home is about 2/3rds of what it actually would sell for now.

The employment rates currently are the lowest they've been.

I should point out that I don't still live in the same home. I've had to move several times for work.

I'd also add that some people seem to want more and more but pay in less. Tax amounts at the moment simply aren't high enough but any government propsing to increase them isn't electable because people are greedy.

There are also a significant amount of people who think that the govt has a money tree and don't understand that the money they have is paid by other people. The amount of times I've seen comments about why don't the govt do this or why don't the council do that but seem to have no awareness that those things cost money and they aren't contributing at all. We need to do better at education our children about how things work.