Care for the elderly - should taxpayers fund it to protect inheritances?

[Upwind]

Gordon Brown thinks so:

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/alice_miles/article3926958.ece

"The Government is proposing that younger workers should fund the care of the elderly through a new form of social insurance or ageing tax; a ?new social care and support system?, offering protection to all, as the Prime Minister put it. Mr Brown added an astonishing thing: ?We can and must look to give people the opportunity and the support to save for their old age in a way that insures them and protects their houses and their inheritance.?

It is amazing that after all the row over the 10p tax grab, and party fury over inheritance tax freebies to the better-off, Mr Brown is banging that drum again. "
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I think it is disgraceful that a "Labour" government keep transfering wealth from young and poor to old and rich by any means possible. Why should low income workers pay to protect the inheritances of the wealthy?

Riven, so sorry for your worries. Do you have other dcs?

And the great joke is that NI payments made one month are used to finance next month's benefits - so any NIs paid by pensioners over their lives are long gone!

Uriel, I agree (as a Scot) that the Scottish system is ideal, but unfortunately reliant on English taxes ...

No

We will work till we die or can physically no longer do it. Like millions of others.

We spend what we earn because we cannot afford to save for trying to live.

More people are living longer.

Folks of our generation are going to have to adjust their way of thinking.

It's not possible for ANY society to support huge percentages of the population living for 30 years or more and not working.

There needs to be some serious legislation to deal with age discrimination AND the retirement age must be raised.

Riven you are far from alone. Millions of people have no hope of paying into a pension or saving.

This reality is already upon us.

The idea of long retirements is largely a construct of the very recent - past 60 years or so - past. And will prove a failed social experiment.

Let's face it, even in some of our grandparents' time, no one expected to be able to stop working and play golf for 30+ years.

I just don't see how that is going to work.

Very true, zippi.

TBH, I see NI as a tax and don't expect to ever see a penny of it again.

what about people getting paid properly to be carers & being able to take time off from their jobs to do this difficult task?

am thinking people should sell to pay for care - why the fuck should i p another tax so that thesons and daughters of home owners can get farking richer?

i think not if the sons and daughters want the money - they will provide the care

there is definitely age discrimination

and it is rife in the public sector and local government where you might imagine it would not be

no doubt also at work in national government

and young people now seem to think a)they will never get old and b) old age starts at about 38

You're right expat. One grandmother worked right up until her death, the other developed senile dmentia very shortly after years as a carer. She didn't really have a retirement.

Agree about NI.

It's tricky but I can see the logic that if someone is going into a care home, they won't actually be living in their house - protecting it is just protecting the inheritance of their relatives. And why shouldn't someone who has a valuable asset that they aren't using contribute towards the cost of their care?

At the same time, it's very distressing for elderly people and means there is no hope of them returning to their own home even if support could be put in place. I don't think SS can force a sale if there is a husband or wife still living in the house, although might be different for partners who are not co-owners or other relatives who have been acting as carers, I guess.

Crying shame that the Tory govt. forced local authorities to start using private care homes rather than running their own - was much more efficient/cheaper for the tax payer when councils ran most care homes and better terms and conditions for care workers too.

Where does GB think he's going to get this money from after taxing young people to the hilt?

Does he really think they're just going to sit there and say, 'Yeah, Gordon, you're so right! I'm going to pay even more so that, in addition to never being able to own anything, I won't be able to save FA or put into a pension scheme, all so some people can get richer. Okay.'?

I swear to God that man would steal the milk out of a baby's bottle if given the chance.

And yes, the Scottish system is paid for in part from the monies they are allocated by Westminster, make no mistake.

i am experimenting with alternative provision for my old age by snaring a young man but i doubt i am going to manage to persuade him to hang around long enough lolol [gloom]

going back to my mums situation - she paid lots for her care home/ hospice and once we've paid her bills my sis & I will be left with a really small amount.

you can have £20,000 before you start to pay for care but once you've paid bills, funeral, solicitors fees there is nothing really left.

My grandfather worked from the time he could stand up. Quite literally, as his family ran a boarding house and there were 15 children who lived.

He retired and died the next year.

Actually, retirement payments used to be calculated on statics of people only living 5 or so years past retirement age.

This isn't happening anymore.

So something has to be done.

NI has always been a tax - working generation pay for today's pensioners and are supposed to be funded themselves by tomorrow's pensioners when they get to that age. Otherwise you would have had to delay retirement benefits when it was first brought in, with people paying into it for 30 years before they saw any benefit.

However, NI does also affect your contributory benefits so you are paying for something you might get back in statutory maternity allowance or the old unemployment benefit - not sure if job seekers allowance is affected by contributions anymore?

What happens with married couples? I met an elderly couple where the husband needed a lot of caring which was too much for the wife, but he couldn't go into a home (which they both had considered) because she would have lost the house. Now that's not right.

how about 100% inheritance tax to pay for care of the elderly? It's something that's been mooted for a while by some, would certainly level the playing field a bit, Duke of Westminster would be in for a shock!

This was in the Telegraph in Feb...
Warren Buffett, currently worth £30 billion, described President Bush's plan to drop inheritance tax as like "choosing the 2020 Olympics team by picking the eldest sons of the gold meal winners in the 2000 Olympics". He has given most of his wealth to charity, as has Bill Gates. They are following in a long line of American moneymakers who have thought the same way. Andrew Carnegie said: "He who dies possessed of enormous sums will die disgraced."

It's strangely attractive to me this idea of 100% inheritance tax, by all means use your wealth in your lifetime to benefit your children, great education, fantastic opportunities, but when you shuffle off that's it, your kids are on their own. Of course it'll never happen, no political party in the world would do it as it's just not a vote winner, but oddly utopian to me....

of course working into old age relies on being able to get work and being healthy

i have my fingers crossed i will be healthy...i am trying my best but its not always that easy and part of me says if i am finding it really really hard to get work now then i stand no chance in future

sorry, that's slightly off the plot, but the talk of tax and wealth distribution got me thinking...

I'd vote for that, HeadFairy, as long as there was a way to avoid the rich just handing over their entire assets to their kids in their lifetimes to get round it.

The other thing that needs to change is peoples' sense of entitlement.

Again, this is a relatively new construct, largely of post-WWII.

The idea that, because you work, you work hard and are therefore deserving of all sorts of things, like a long break from working.

It sounds VERY harsh. But, this is a big fallacy which leads to many hard feelings and much misery.

You see it all the time in many Western cultures, when people are confronted with difficult or challenging situations. 'It's not fair!', 'Why me?', 'This shouldn't be happening!'

i feel rather like a pensioner without a pensioner now tbh

i am living off money lent me by my exh which he will het back when i sell my house but once that is gone i will be back to square one

and it will be months not years

The great thing about inheritance tax is it is completely avoidable. If you want your children to have some of your wealth - you can simply give it to them while you are alive and it will be helpful to them when raising young families

But the Daily Mail and the Torygraph wouldn't stand for it

Exactly, zippi! Which is why something serious needs to be done about age-discrimination.

If people have to work longer, there has to be constructs put in place for them to do that.

Including flexible options for people who do have health problems, but aren't completely incapacitated.

edam, I guess you couldn't just hand over large parts of your estate to your children as you can't now. There are restrictions on how much you can give before you have to pay tax. Hopefully that would stop that sort of thing happening.

don't understand headfairy what is 100% inheritance tax?

i have also avoided support for mental health issues because i didnt want to be saddled with confessing them in job applications but i have now swallowed that one and i am now certainly far less likely to get a job unless i start yet another business of my pown as i am the only person who wants to employ me