Brown's raid on pensions costs Britain £100 billion

Thrugelmir

An article from 2006. As a reminder of the past.

The total current and future impact of Mr Brown's move — known technically as the abolition of Advanced Corporation Tax (ACT) relief — has been calculated by Terry Arthur, a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, in a paper written for the professional body. Mr Arthur said: "What happened in 1997 represented an enormous and ongoing raid on the assets of UK company pension schemes. My research shows it would be very hard to justify an impact of less than £100 billion — and even £150 billion may still be a conservative estimate."
Mr Arthur's work is likely to be politically explosive. The Chancellor's raid on pension funds is blamed for creating the crisis that has left huge shortfalls in pension pots and forced hundreds of firms to wind up final salary schemes.

Derek Scott, who was Mr Blair's senior economic adviser for six years, said that the Prime Minister disagreed with Mr Brown's decision to remove relief, but the Chancellor "pushed it through" anyway.

A Treasury spokesman said: "This methodology totally fails to recognise that, by establishing a stable macro-economic framework and cutting corporation tax alongside reforms to remove the distortionary impact of dividend tax credit, the Government created better conditions for investment and growth and hence greater investment opportunities for pension funds."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1531448/Browns-raid-on-pensions-costs-Britain-100-billion.html

Moby

Thrugelmir wrote: »

An article from 2006. As a reminder of the past.

Here you go....a bit of reality for you:-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/48971956-e0b6-11db-8b48-000b5df10621.html#axzz2MPA0TPiT

http://www.stephenbeer.com/Articles/165151/Stephen_Beer/Economy/Dont_blame_Brown.aspx

CLAPTON

Of course the greatest raid on Final Salary schemes was made in the 1980s/90s when the government of the day ordered companies to stop contributing to their final salary schemes so they could pay more tax.

Basically stopped them building reverses in the good times so they had to start closing rthe FS schemes when times became more difficult.

Wookster

And we're hearing that there maybe another raid on pensions in the upcoming budget.

Rather than taxing more and more and more, we need to reduce the size of the state to one we can actually afford.

Governments never seem to learn this.

Thrugelmir

CLAPTON wrote: »

Of course the greatest raid on Final Salary schemes was made in the 1980s/90s when the government of the day ordered companies to stop contributing to their final salary schemes so they could pay more tax.

Basically stopped them building reverses in the good times so they had to start closing rthe FS schemes when times became more difficult.

This affected all pension schemes including individuals.

As an individual it hit me personally.

Brown was the master of stealth tax. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

CLAPTON

Thrugelmir wrote: »

This affected all pension schemes including individuals.

As an individual it hit me personally.

Brown was the master of stealth tax. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

No idea what this means.

chucky

Thrugelmir wrote: »

This affected all pension schemes including individuals.

As an individual it hit me personally.

Brown was the master of stealth tax. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Is this in English? Is it even relevant to Clapton's post?

Thrugelmir

CLAPTON wrote: »

No idea what this means.

But you think that Brown left a booming economy in 2010?

StevieJ

Thrugelmir wrote: »

This affected all pension schemes including individuals.

As an individual it hit me personally.

Brown was the master of stealth tax. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

So when is Ozzie going to reverse it?

Thrugelmir

StevieJ wrote: »

So when is Ozzie going to reverse it?

The moneys been accounted for in Browns welfare spending plans that he instigated.

I wonder when the lid will come off the Brown/Blair relationship.

So obvious that the party at senior level was split. The current shadow cabinet are all Brownites. Explains so much.

Fella

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Brown was the master of stealth tax.

Never a truer word spoken. Labour under Blair/Brown managed to fool an awful lot of people for an awfully long time that they weren't simply old "tax & spend" Labour with a new marketing spin.

The irony is that Labour were rescued by the Global crash. Without the crash, the UK Economy was a 100% cert to be in hideous trouble anyway. The crash just allowed lowlives like Brown & Balls to glibly blame their incompetence on something else. And there are plenty of vested interests & morons who'll support that claim at every opportunity.

They like to forget those inconvenient truths. Like, for instance, that Brown was forced to abandon his precious Golden Rule by retrospectively changing it's timeframe, as early as 2005, way before any credit crunch.