Budget

typistretired

At least from April 2015 the Income limit for age-related allowances should disappear as we will all be on the same tax allowance. Sad for those pensioners who have to wait until next year to receive the £10,500 allowance.

grizzly1911

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26666103

kidmugsy

typistretired wrote: »

At least from April 2015 the Income limit for age-related allowances should disappear as we will all be on the same tax allowance. Sad for those pensioners who have to wait until next year to receive the £10,500 allowance.

The ability of people to conjure up complaints because someone else gets something they don't should really have been drummed out of them in the nursery.

talexuser

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Oh, so it was a good budget for people living off savings and investment income - such as pensioners - then?

A quick look at the savings pages here shows a 3 year fix can get you 2.7/2.65% so the extra is around £2 a week, I don't need to repeat my other points again.

So to your question, yes it is, but I just don't think the hyperbole justifies trying to portray it as compensating for 6 years of 0.5% base rates.

N1AK

Archi_Bald wrote: »

grizzly1911, it is quite a ridiculous suggestion to possibly prescribe how much anyone can spend of their own money on themselves (which is what we are talking about here)..

It's not their own money. They got tax relief on the pension and it isn't ridiculous for that to come with terms. You can't, for example, withdraw the money before retiring. Is that, also, ridiculous?

My concern about a complete de-restriction is that if a considerable proportion of pensioners did binge spend the money (more likely now that more people are getting into pensions passively, rather than making an active choice) then there will be political pressure to improve the state pension and benefits for those without additional income, this will invariably mean higher taxation or less spending on those who have earned more or saved more.

ColdIron

N1AK wrote: »

It's not their own money. They got tax relief on the pension

Of course it's their own money, the fact that it benefited from tax relief just means HMRC didn't take any of my money from me. If I put £1,000 of money I earned into my pension which bit of that is not mine?

You do realise that the taxpayer makes no direct contributions to defined contribution pensions don't you?

Archi_Bald

Also, in the process of "bingeing" away my money, I would pay income tax on all but max 25% of the money. That 25% max tax free is nothing new, we have had that rule for years.

You could argue that I do not need to pay tax if my total income was below £15.5K, and you would be right. But hopefully nobody will be talking about any kind of binge on £15.5K a year.

I just can't understand why people have a bee in their bonnet when adults are allowed to take charge of their financial affairs. It's long overdue.

atush

Even now deprivation of assets would include if holidays were extravagant along with other spending. Ie if round the world cruises were bought along with a flash car etc.

jimjames

Archi_Bald wrote: »

I just can't understand why people have a bee in their bonnet when adults are allowed to take charge of their financial affairs. It's long overdue.

I agree. But we can be sure there will be threads on here from people complaining that they have no money because they've invested it all in carbon credits/hotel rooms/wine/pods/etc with a guaranteed 30% pa return and now have nothing left.

I hope there are some checks in place to prevent the gullible from being parted from their money too easily by scammers.

atush

Sorry glen, gotta disagree on this one

so politicians always fall over each other to offer them a special sop, bus passes (as if they need it more than people who have to get to work),

Pensioners need a free bus pass as many can't afford to run a car after retiring, or go from 2 cars down to one. So might need bus services desperately. Also some live rurally so could actually be stranded w/o access to money, food shopping etc. if they could not afford the tickets.