The Baroness and the triple lock!

bigfreddiel

saver861 wrote: »

No doubt you will start a new thread if it does .... or even if it does not!!!

Not a bad idea........, here goes........., cheers fj

bigfreddiel

The Spanish SP is £26k, some £3k above the average Spanish wage!

UK SP is £8k

How do the Spanish do it? Can they afford it?

Cheers fj

sleepless_saver

bigfreddiel wrote: »

The Spanish SP is £26k, some £3k above the average Spanish wage!

UK SP is £8k

How do the Spanish do it? Can they afford it?

Cheers fj

That's the maximum Spanish pension, based on paying in the maximum possible amount (which most people don't). And no, they can't afford it.

Thrugelmir

bigfreddiel wrote: »

My post was about Ros Altmann being two faced,

Many people hold personal views. However they follow the majority line. As that's how democracy works. For better or worse.

Now with the roll out of auto enrolment. The pressure starts to ease on the state with the emphasis back on people learning to take personal responsibility. The state pension should only be a safety net.

Sapphire

Erm, at the risk of stating the obvious, it was sarcasm in response to your absurd 'soak the rich' comments. Living in Kingston upon Thames you are rich and privileged yourself, relatively speaking.

Absurd. There are both affluent and impoverished people living in Kingston upon Thames. You know nothing about me – and shouldn't make assumptions about people you don't know. Relevance to the discussion?

Given your previous postings, did these grandparents (and even parents?) actually live in the UK for most of their working life - I wonder what your fellow Brexiteers think of the idea of higher taxes to pay for higher immigrant benefits...?

Yes, my parents actually did live in the UK during all their working lives, and worked very hard indeed. What have 'immigrant benefits' got to do with it?

By all means expand!

I don't need to 'expand' on anything! You are the one who posted some incoherent nonsense about the Seventies. I certainly don't need to do any research for you – which you should have done before posting some indecipherable, irrelevant inanity.

Hmm, wording that implies you earn rather more now than you did when you were 20. Such a radically different pattern to most higher rate tax payers.

I don't understand the comment (but I'm not a higher rate taxpayer). Again, what is the relevance of this comment to the discussion on this thread.

Erm, nor am I, but thank you for volunteering that information. Although, being a 3+ hour a day commuter up the South West Main Line myself, I'm still pretty keen on the Kingston wealth tax idea.

Envy, for some reason? And again, relevance to the discuss?

As a general suggestion, I would advise you to present coherent, relevant arguments to discussions, instead of letting fly with comments intended merely to provoke.

That's really all I have to say to you.

jamesd

bigfreddiel wrote: »

Today Ros Altmann said the triple lock on State Pensions was unsustainable but ministers were too frightened to change it!

The Triple Lock was a Conservative manifesto item at the last general election so it was not up to her to change it even if she wanted to. Breaking manifesto plans is a decision that a Prime minister would have to agree to and when she took it to Cameron he refused. That's why she suggested abandoning it for the higher or pay or CPI inflation after 2020 when that manifesto will have been replaced by one for that election.

The increased personal allowance has also helped to increase pensioner incomes, often taking the whole state pension out of income tax these days. A bit of history of the personal allowance level:

2005/6: 4895 (6591 if increased to 2015 by RPI each year) Labour
2006/7: 5036 (6571) Labour
2007/8: 5225 (6538) Labour
2008/9: 6035 (7263) Labour
2009/10: 6475 (7214) Labour
2010/11: 6475 (7487) Coalition
2011/12: 7475 (8216) Coalition
2012/13: 8105 (8633) Coalition
2013/14: 9440 (9757) Coalition
2014/15: 10000 Coalition
2015/16: 10600 Conservative
2016/17: 11000 Conservative
2017/18: 11500 planned Conservative

2015/16 basic state pension is £6203.60 a year, single tier £8093.80 and old system long time low earner (190 a week combined basic and additional state pensions from a few years ago) £9880.

fatbeetle

Sapphire wrote: »

Have you any idea how little the state pension is (the lowest in Europe),

Aaprt from the fact it's not "the lowest in Europe"


have you seen who gets the highest? Those fiscally prudent Greeks.

The state pension scheme is part of the Social Security system in Spain. There are two categories of pension in Spain: contributory and non-contributory. The pensions system is financed by a payroll tax on salaries. The employee pays 4.7% of his/her salary while employers must pay the equivalent of 23.6% of an employees salary into the scheme.

jamesd

Sapphire wrote: »

it is well known, for example, that many millionaires and billionaires syphon off money and pay very little tax (if any). Put up taxes for higher rate taxpayers, who are much better off than poor pensioners, and who, despite moaning about how poor they are, have many more luxuries than pensioners ever did when they were working.

What percentage of the total income tax bill do you think should be paid by those who are higher rate income tax payers? 50%? 60%? More?

AnotherJoe

Rather than increase the tax on everyone, which the rich will be able to sidestep anyway, how about just ensuring that it's harder, much harder, to evade paying your taxes , by cutting down on the morass of loopholes and exceptions that enable people like Philip Green to avoid paying pretty much anything.

EdSwippet

jamesd wrote: »

What percentage of the total income tax bill do you think should be paid by those who are higher rate income tax payers? 50%? 60%? More?

Presumably "more", since either of the two suggested figures would actually be a reduction. Higher and additional rate tax contribute around 66.5% of the total income tax bill.