Incapacity Benefit & Private or Occupational Pension

pyrolizzie

:mad: The current incapacity benefit is £84.50 per week (2008/9 tax year) but if you have any other income such as a private pension which is over £85.00 per week, the incapacity benefit is reduced by 50p for every £1 your private pension is above £85.00. The £85.00 rule has been in place for a good number of years and is not increased each year, so once you fall into this trap, every time you receive an increase in your private pension, the government take 50p of every £1 increase you gain, thus eroding your net income drastically.

I have set up the following petition on the government's e-petition website and would welcome anyone to sign it in the hope that we can get the government to amend the £85 rule to uprate this in line with inflation, or better still to remove the £85 rule altogether.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/incap-inequality/

A lot of people are falling into this trap when they are advised to take their pensions whilst on incapacity benefit and it really needs highlighting with the government. Why should we pay into a good pension scheme and then loose 50% of every increase we get. Money is tight enough when you are disabled and need additional care and all the government is doing is penalising those people who have tried to provide for themselves in retirement, not knowing that they will find themselves disabled and needing extra care.

It is an absolute disgrace that we loose out just because we have made provision for our retirement.