To think the UK unfairly taxes families?

[OwnGravityField]

I have just found out that the UK is an outlier, in that it completely stops collecting a form of social tax (NI in the UK) once someone gets to pension age.

In every other country, pensioners’ contributtion as a proportion of income is much more similar to working households.

Example of disparity in the UK:

A working person earning 25k pays:

• Income tax: £2,486
• NI: £1,002
• total = £3488

A pensioner with an income of 25k pays only:

• Income tax: £2,486
• no NI
• total = £2486

So, a UK worker on 25k pays 40% MORE total tax than the pensioner (the difference between 2486 and 3488).

Let’s compare with a beloved utopia of fairness, such as Sweden: worker on similar salary pays 9% more tax than a pensioner.

Yes, other countries have slightly larger differences, but none except France come anywhere close to the UK difference in tax treatment between workers and pensioners.

In the interests of balanced sharing of info: France is tax and spend basket case. France taxes workers roughly twice as hard as pensioners. It’s obscene and the country is practically bankrupt.

Most other European countries narrow the gap by keeping small health or social contributions on pension income.

You might be thinking most UK pensioners don’t have 25k coming in? Nope. 3 million have individual incomes of 25k or more.

Anyway, I think it’s shocking that people at the most expensive time of their lives (kids, mortgage, food) are taxed so much more heavily. AIBU?

Feel that way about anyone, of any age who tries to avoid paying their share.

Why do you assume I'm a pensioner.
I currently have a retirement age of 68 and I expect I'm far enough away from it for it to change again.
If I live long enough to claim it I'll have worked and paid NI for 55+ years.
What does the nhs being the reason for an aging population mean? You think we should leave people to die after a certain age? If that's the case do we need to apply that to anyone under that age who isn't or will never be productive too?

Not on all income. The landlord taking maybe thousands a week in rent won't pay NI on it. If you want to talk about fairness don't cherry pick bits you don't like, look at the whole picture.

You have to go back as far as the 1970s to find even half of mothers staying at home and not working. Nearly 70% of mothers were working by 1991.

It's a very long time since it was easy for families to live with one parent earning.

yes, but the people claiming their pensions now - do you want to change the parameters on them just because younger people are jealous?

I started full time work at 17. When i started work my pension age would have been 60. Then 63. Then 66. Now it is 67. How much more should i pay in?

How is it 'pensioner bashing' to state facts that you don't want to hear?

Because it is selectively targeting pensions and ignoring the other income sources that don't attract NI.

It's not a question of jealousy. It's a question of fairness and adapting to circumstances that have very clearly changed. It also isn't about you and how hard you have worked. Many have worked hard and continue to do so.
What really amazes me is the jealousy exhibited by a few posters on here, complaining that they didn't receive UC or have foreign holidays!

Incorrect. Only Boomers had it better than their parents, that generation was an anomaly. I’m coming up for retirement and worse off than my boomer parents. It’s not their fault they were born at the end of the war so I’m hardly going to begrudge them anything. My kids have time to put more into their pension and to prepare better for a reduction in state pensions if it happens. My generation have had little warning re pensions,a loss in CB and uni fees. My kid’s generation will have to resist the consumerist luxury lifestyle their generation live in though. They won’t be able to have both. It’s down to them to accept life is hard, not full of luxuries and if you want anything you need to work hard.

So tedious isn't it. It's pretty awful knowing how many people there are that seem to resent the fact we're still alive.

That’s why NI should be scrapped, and just rolled into tax. And tax on dividends etc should be just as high as it is on earned income

My adult children are not as poor as me. People need to stop making assumptions.

Such as landlords? That's a very small group by comparison, in a completely different position and they already have a particularly unfavourable tax position.
I am not a LL btw.
It is more than reasonable to ask why pensioners should get special treatment compared to younger, poorer groups. If we can't even discuss basic things like this without taking everything so personally, what hope is there?

They are also the responsibility of their parents not the state.
Not sure if they're the future - they don't seem to bothered about working for a living.

I wasn’t sure about the nhs link, either. My husband has unfortunately had two hospital stays this year, moved from ward to ward. There were far more “working age” people on wards than elderly. Most elderly people we know have far healthier lifestyles than those in their 40s and 50s, especially those in their 80s.
Of course we develop conditions as we age. My mum and stepdad, for example, 85 and 79, worked from 18 and 16, stepdad in the army. She stopped working at 53 or so but kept up her “stamp”. Mum had two hospital stays when she gave birth. That’s it. She has dementia but no other conditions and has no regular prescriptions. Stepdad had heart surgery to correct a congenital defect, takes a daily antihistamine, no prescription meds. Retired at 70.

The NHS is the reason that more people survive into old age: without the NHS more people would not live so long.

Oh and free Covid/flu and pneumonia jabs annually but that’s it, the entirety of their take from the NHS.

Where have you got the 70% figure from please? Do you mean mothers of young children or all women?

I too wonder why OP is focusing on pensioners.

People pay no NI on income such as share dividends. About £70 billion was paid out in dividend income in the year 22/23.

Applying NI to that would provide a heap of money for the country.

So what’s your cut off for treatment? When contributions stop? What are the implications of that for those who can never contribute?
I really don’t want to live in a society like that.

Of course there are some pensioners in excellent health but statistically they are the highest users of NHS services, as you would expect. The lifestyle since the 1970s has been a progressively less healthy one, hence the rise in cancers, hear disease, etc amongst the now middle aged.

So what point are you making? That the NHS is a bad idea because it treats people so they can become old. The ill should be left to die?

That’s simply not true. My parents, 85 and 79, were/are far better off than theirs were, as were they than theirs, back to the Victorian era.

This isn't about you or your children in particular. Generalisations are needed in this circumstance. It's impossible for tax systems to account for every individual.

Mothers. Should have been two thirds, not 70% though. Apologies.

ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/BN234.pdf