The Coalition has been accused by Labour (and others) in yesterdays Budget (and previous budget improvements in the State Pension via ‘the triple lock’), of cynically courting the ‘grey’ vote, implying that our pensioners lived life on the hog under Labour – which may explain why the next Labour government wants to tax pensions, AGAIN, albeit for the wealthy – but as we know, once a cash cow is identified by a (continually overspending) Labour administration, there is always tax creep to the less wealthy.
The Mansions Tax proposed by both Labour and the Lib Dems, probably on homes valued over £2 million, will badly hit home asset rich, income poor, elderly/pensioners - that if forced to sell, will still provide over £140k Stamp Duty (7% band) to the Treasury – in a guaranteed raid on those a socialist government would still call ‘wealthy’, but arguably could be called a ‘bed room tax’ for the ‘rich’.
But Labour has a bit of recent form attacking the elderly; the measly rises in the State Pension over 10-years of ££££quango plenty, may not be relevant to those in £2 million homes staying within them, but didn’t they throw a 72p rise at pensioners one year to pay for their ‘costs of living’ pressures, when annual Council Tax rises would have more than wiped those out?
Furthermore how many of those now home asset rich, income poor elderly will be income poorer due to Brown/Balls Labour raid on Private pensions they were not told about before the 1997 General Election?
Even before the 300-year record low interest rates/Quantitative Easing affecting the annual income from pension annuities – pension actuaries calculated that Labour had cost pensions over £100 billion and closed many Private Sector final salary schemes.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266662/The-man-stole-old-age-How-Gordon-Brown-secretly-imposed-ruinous-tax-wrecked-retirements-millions.html
And this was the result on the Private Pensions final salary provisions, due to the actions of a Labour government that thought in the late 1990’s private pensions were well funded/over provisioned and were ripe of socialist envy pickings.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10698432/Final-salary-pensions-10-times-more-common-in-public-sector.html
Meanwhile those without adequate pensions themselves, face an overly large national pension liability of currently over £1.3 trillion, £1 trillion totally unfunded and has to come out of annual budgets when due - on top of the current £1.265 trillion National Debt - thanks to another bad Brown choice of increasing the Public Sector/Quango payroll by over 1 million from 1997 to 2010.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14134847
“Public sector pension liabilities top £1 trillion”
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4 replies
Isitmebut · 20/03/2014 13:48
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