Free money from the tax man - Is it possible ?

MrChips

deemy2004 wrote:

whilst the private sector has to make do with market forces that no doubt will likely discount the £900 billion public sector pensions black hole through marking down pension fund valuations through poor performing assets due to excessive non productive taxation.

Sorry I don't understand this bit, can you explain please.

I agree that public sector pensions are currently too generous compared with (most) private sector pension schemes and that public sector workers are being unreal in their refusal to have their benefits adjusted downwards - the pensions they are on now are unaffordable going forwards. But I think that there should be some sort of advantage to working in the public sector - if people think their pensions are too generous, go get a job in the public sector.

ManAtHome

Unfortunately that's exactly what Noo Lab have been doing - let's have a bit of a boom by creating heaps of tax-funded jobs, oh and we can't take them on so's we'd better give 'em higher pay rises than the private sector, and oh, we can't take 'em on so we'll let 'em continue to retire at 60 whilst introducing additional taxes on private pensions, and make (private) women retire at 65 instead of 60, and make (private) everybody under 50 retire at 67 (or perhaps later when they get there), oh, and best not forget to increase MP pensions by 40 odd percent 'coz we're dead hard working (in the House and 14 directorships etc...).

Of course the real problems will start to surface in 10-15 years time when all the 'baby boomers' have retired - may be a bit too late for the rest of you give B&B a kicking...

deemy2004

MrChips wrote:

Sorry I don't understand this bit, can you explain please.

I agree that public sector pensions are currently too generous compared with (most) private sector pension schemes and that public sector workers are being unreal in their refusal to have their benefits adjusted downwards - the pensions they are on now are unaffordable going forwards. But I think that there should be some sort of advantage to working in the public sector - if people think their pensions are too generous, go get a job in the public sector.

The goal posts keep being changed to the deterement of private pension funds which are being squeezed for more and more money.

It started with Gorden taxing dividend income in private pension funds !

Now apparently we have gone from no pensions deficit in the public sector to one approaching £1 trillion !!! That will put a further massive drain on the private pension funds / asset performance.

Don't forget the other recent change of PPF.

Why should the private sector pension funds subsidise the public sector. They should be funded by contributions and asset performance, the SAME treatment as private pension funds, rather than writing £1 trillion blank cheques.

Tim_L

And while we're at it, whatever happened to the much trumpeted 100,000 reduction in public sector headcount?

ManAtHome

It was re-positioned to form an inverse pro-rata against the original forecast...

Erm.... it increased by around 100,000.

deemy2004

Tim_L wrote:

And while we're at it, whatever happened to the much trumpeted 100,000 reduction in public sector headcount?

It was election BS....

The facts are that for every non productive public sector job cut, a further 4 non productive public sector jobs are created... :rolleyes: