tax exempt savings?

dunstonh

Thats £5 billion plundered a year but the knock on effect has been greater. Interesting point is that the pension shortfall also equals the amount taken out of pensions by Gordon Brown.

GB decided that as most pension funds were overfunded he should hit them with a type of windfall tax. However, he failed to take into account that stockmarkets go down as well as up and that new rules were coming into play for occupational schemes. Consequently, many occupational pensions have gone from being over funded to being massively underfunded.

deemy2004

It was when the stock market was booming and the funds had billions of pounds of surpluses.

But then the market went into a three year bear market.

But Gorden kept collecting his £5 billion or so...

As above... Get your ISA's while you can, and don't worry about any government removing existing ISA's their tax free status as that would be political suicide.

Cagey

Do you think it WOULD be political suicide ,Deemy. What percentage of the population are ISA savers & how many of them would vote Labour anyway. Most Labour voters are not savers & look to get everything from the state(controversial or what)?.

dunstonh

I doubt it would be suicide. Look what they have done with Pensions and still people vote for them.

cheerfulcat

Yes, and GB was so sure of himself that he slipped a nasty little tax on with profits funds through...so much for wanting to encourage savers.

deemy2004

dunstonh wrote:

I doubt it would be suicide. Look what they have done with Pensions and still people vote for them.

But that passed over the heads of virtually all people who contribute to pensions.... as though it was an invisible tax.

Whereas removing the tax free status of ISa's would be very visible.

About 12 million ISA accounts are opened every year, so we are talking BIG votes ! More than enough to effect the outcome of elections.

deemy2004

Cagey wrote:

Do you think it WOULD be political suicide ,Deemy. What percentage of the population are ISA savers & how many of them would vote Labour anyway. Most Labour voters are not savers & look to get everything from the state(controversial or what)?.

If that were so then labour would not be in government

The truth is its the people in the middle, i.e. thost that work, pay taxes, save in ISA's that decide the outcome of elections, and not the core voters on either side of the political spectrum..

blinko

i think that they wouldnt remove ISA's without providing some kind of alterntive tax free option that wouldnt be very popular plus the incentive to save etc would be lost, i think that would raise and introduce stealth taxes before targeting isa's

isasmurf

Over 16 million people have an ISA of which, according to Inland Revenue figures, about 1/3 have an income of less then £10,000.

Removing the tax free status of ISAs may or may not political suicide, but if you knew you were going to lose an election then why not do it anyway and let the Opposition clean up the mess.

Quite frankly I doubt if anybody will vote solely on the issue that they would have to pay tax on their savings. I'm sure there are much bigger issues out there that would sway an election. Personally I wouldn't use this as a vote issue. What I save in an ISA I would save anyway, whilst the tax free wrapper is there I'll say, "Ta very much Gordon", but if it wasn't there then it wouldn't bother me.

Anyway, this thread was about tax exempt savings products with insurance companies, not ISAs.

Mutual_Bob

see Money Management Nov 2008 for best result on regular saving with Insurance companies.