Granny Tax Hysteria

ukcarper

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Yes, 65 and 63. They stated so.

It wasn't dorothy in her 90's ringing in.

It’s easy to find people to moan about things nobody is happy about having their income reduced. It will effect me but as I said I don’t see why I should get it and a young person doesn’t.

I would like to see the money save used to help the young unemployed find work not cut the tax for the rich.

ukcarper

ruggedtoast wrote: »

How much are they losing? I heard it was about £80 quid a year.

We just lost five hundred nicker a year from the tax credits being changed. And every year inflation wipes out another chunk of my real salary.

80 quid sounds pretty good to me.

At the moment it is worth about £40 a month to someone getting about £11k a year but that will reduce as the normal tax allowance catches up.

chewmylegoff

who cares about all this boomer nonsense. the fact is that no-one is being "hit" with a tax rise, they are merely not getting some future preferential treatment. they will still get a higher tax allowance (£10,500 to £10,660 for over 75s) than anyone else.

the personal allowance will be £8,500 or so next year (12/13), then it will be £9,200 or whatever (13/14), then it will probably go up to £10,000 (14/15) to achieve the watered down coalition version of the libdem manifesto pledge (i.e. £10,000 personal allowance, to be introduced in 2010).

so even at the end of this administration, pensioners (expect those retiring after this budget) will continue to enjoy a higher personal allowance than anyone else.

as has become normal in this country, if you give people preferential treatment for a period of time they think they are "entitled" to continue to receive it forever.

sorry, but no.

kabayiri

ukcarper wrote: »

If you believe people who are currently avoiding paying the 50% tax will willingly pay the 45% I think you will believe anything.
...

Yes

The army of accountants who helped them avoid the 50 rate will obviously hold up their arms in surrender mode at this cunning 45% figure.

Avoiding the top rate is probably a sport, and a badge of honour at the dinner party.

Itismehonest

It will probably effect me but c'est la vie.

I think that anyone who was saving toward retirement has already had to rethink their future lifestyle due to the appalling interest rates on savings.

What makes any change in pension criteria most concerning for people already of pensionable age, or close to it, is that they find themselves with little or no opportunity to make up for savings lost & future reductions in income because their working lives are behind them.

It will have a knock on effect, I guess, in that more of their money will be spent during their own lifetime (& there are already enough moans about selling properties to fund care) so inheritances could be lower or non-existent for those eager to see the boomers buried to cash in on their mythical wealth.

chewmylegoff

ukcarper wrote: »

If you believe people who are currently avoiding paying the 50% tax will willingly pay the 45% I think you will believe anything.

well, we will see, won't we. the less tax you are required to pay, the less money and effort you are prepared to devote to avoiding/evading it. i'm not sure that it will make any real difference to the tax take to be honest. (although osborne's comment about people deliberately pushing £16 billion of income into the year before 50% was introduced is just going to be replayed with people deliberately pushing just as much into 2013/14 when the top rate is reduced to 50%, he won't be pointing it out then, he will be going on about how more revenue was raised under 45% than under 50%).

Also I don’t think all pensioners vote Tory.

obviously. but i suspect the majority of the ones who are actually affected by this reduction in preferential tax treatment aren't exactly going to be the core labour demographic.

ukcarper

chewmylegoff wrote: »

well, we will see, won't we. the less tax you are required to pay, the less money and effort you are prepared to devote to avoiding/evading it. i'm not sure that it will make any real difference to the tax take to be honest. (although osborne's comment about people deliberately pushing £16 billion of income into the year before 50% was introduced is just going to be replayed with people deliberately pushing just as much into 2013/14 when the top rate is reduced to 50%, he won't be pointing it out then, he will be going on about how more revenue was raised under 45% than under 50%).



obviously. but i suspect the majority of the ones who are actually affected by this reduction in preferential tax treatment aren't exactly going to be the core labour demographic.

You might be surprised after all it’s basically those with a combined pension of £10.5 to £24k.

StevieJ

chewmylegoff wrote: »

the personal allowance will be £8,500 or so next year (12/13), then it will be £9,200 or whatever (13/14), then it will probably go up to £10,000 (14/15) to achieve the watered down coalition version of the libdem manifesto pledge (i.e. £10,000 personal allowance, to be introduced in 2010).

Yes, that £10k personal allowance becomes the equivalent of £7835 five years after the last election at 5% RPI. Obviously an improvement on the £6475 in place when they assumed power but not exactly a quantum leap. These politicians are the master of the use of weasel words and promises to dupe the public.

StevieJ

chewmylegoff wrote: »

obviously. but i suspect the majority of the ones who are actually affected by this reduction in preferential tax treatment aren't exactly going to be the core labour demographic.

Very true and a big worry for the Tories, I have noticed even the Daily Wail showing Bolshie signs, only in posted links I may add, I don't actually read that rag

ruggedtoast

Dont know if anyone has linked to this in the Groaner yet:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/22/budget-2012-old-young-granny-tax

Contrary to what the Twitter hashtag #grannytax might tell you, this was not a budget for young people. Little, so far, has been done to address their mass unemployment – nearly 40% of all those without work are under 30 – or homelessness: almost a third of the same group live at home. Instead, the coalition's deficit reduction schemes seem to have been cruelly calculated to hit the young hardest, too often leaving richer older people untouched. But, in a small way, this budget had a watershed moment.

As George Osborne announced the scrapping of age-related pension allowances, he made perhaps the first baby step towards bringing the incomes of young and old into line.

Naturally, it took Ros Altmann, the director of Saga, just minutes to issue a statement describing the removal of this perk for the elderly as an "outrageous assault on decent middle-class pensioners", another dreaded "stealth tax". But if that's the case, it's so stealthy as to be barely perceptible. Besides, she should not worry, Britain's older people are still sacred to this, along with every other recent, chancellor....