£610 a week pension demand is insane

[Thisismyfinesthour]

Just read that there is an online petition doing the rounds for a £610 a WEEK pension demand to the government.
WTAF? Is the heat melting some peoples brains? It seems over 5000 have signed it.
Where do they think the money is coming from?

NI is another income tax in everything but name.

NI goes down from 8% to 2% at the same time as the income tax rate goes from 20% to 40%. So the net rates for working age people are 28% and 42% respectively.

Odd that you're so interested in pretending that working age people are getting a discount.

Well they are. 🤷‍♀️

So you have savings? A lot of pensioners don’t. Was it a pensioner who made you lose your job because you seem raging at OAPs.

You’re a right charmer.

Illegal migrants or foreigners getting even £0.02 of taxpayer money is what is insane. If Luxembourg can do it, so could we, had our government had different priorities.

Gave the wrong figure - Luxembourg is Euro 718 per week, it is Italy which pays Euro 538 per week.

But correct.

I see you’re her pal in the manners department.

Luxembourg? The wealthy tax haven?

They're not. And that's before considering the Plan 2 student loans scam the Coalition Government landed my cohort with. My marginal tax rate was 51% last tax year. In blue collar shift work, such is where the thresholds now lie.

Perhaps you couldn’t get a private pension in your job but I don’t think they weren’t as restricted as you are suggesting.

My parents’ generation were born in the 1920s and all those who worked had workplace pensions. My mother and an aunt were teachers, so had pensions, and a second aunt had an NHS pension. My father and an uncle both had final salary pensions from the private manufacturing companies they worked in and a third aunt had one from an insurance company. Two uncles were self-employed so paid into private pensions.

My grandparents were born in the 1890s. I know one grandfather had a good final salary pension from the bank he worked in. The other grandfather worked in a factory and I don’t know whether he had a pension or not, but they didn’t seem to be short of money, so I presume he did.

I accept, of course, that some people chose to opt out - as some do today - because they did not think they could afford to pay in, but that is a different issue.

I'm not raging at OAPs. I'm just not willing to impoverish an entire generation so that OAPs can have £610 per week - which is far more than many full-time workers get.

And I’m not quite an OAP at 65 but I am retired - it was me who brought up the issue of NI on top of normal taxes just for working people being unfair. But also that the personal allowance is now too low - raising that will help the poorest be that working or not.

Though it is still higher (after adjusting for inflation) than it was at any time before 2013/14, successive Chancellors having increased it significantly prior to Covid. I'm not sure that there's the fiscal headroom for changing it now, not unless it could be cost-neutral.

Main rate is 8%. And of course, employers NIC is 15% (thanks to Reeves), so that's 15% less that the employer can afford to pay the workers. 23% in total - a tax on workers!

Nope, the ones getting a discount are OAPs who are paying lower taxes than workers on the same incomes. NIC IS just another tax, and so are student loan repayments. Calling them something different doesn't mean they're not taxes.

It’s not that much of a tax haven if it’s collecting enough to give pensioners €700 a week.

Of course it is. By offering bargain corporation tax rates Luxembourg is home to many shell companies, bringing in more revenue than a country of its size could normally expect. Therefore it can offer very generous benefits.

My ex MIL? Don't give a damn tbh. Horrible woman

But it was in reply about saying pensioners have paid in. Well not all of them

I immediately gave figures for Italy below, not a wealthy tax haven.

"More than a quarter" is not the majority of pensioners.

The population of Luxemborg is approximately 688,000 people. Nearly half of the country's residents are foreign nationals. You know how the UK would love 50% of the population being foreign nationals.

Only 16% of their population is over 65 years compared with 20% of the UK.

Luxemborg tries to find the pension by a tax on the employee of 8.5%, employer 8.5% and state 8.5%. So about 25% cf around 15% in the uk, I think.

75% of the workforce in Luxemborg are foreign nationals. Portuguese are the biggest component at 13% and they are mostly employed by the construction industry.

I don't think we can wish to emulate Luxemborg.

With respect, I think you have mentioned jobs and careers which were out of reach of a lot of working people who maybe were as educated.

*weren't as educated should say

With some of them you are right, but both grandfathers left school at 15 as did the aunt who worked in the insurance company. They were not highly educated.

As an aside, one of my grandmothers (born 1892) trained to become a teacher when she left school at the age of 12!