Winter Fuel Allowance under discussion by Martin.

Nebulous2

Grumpy_chap said:

BlackKnightMonty said:

Grumpy_chap said:

BlackKnightMonty said:

30% failure is still unacceptable and a consequence of lavish spending on pensioners to the cost of children!

Is that failure rate provably anything to do with the relative expenditure on pensioners or children?
If you put unlimited funding into education, would all children pass GCSE Maths and English at age 16?

My wife never got either (nor 'O' Levels).  The reason was nothing to do with the amount of expenditure on education.

You seem happy with a 30% failure rate; not me. We won’t reconcile the difference.

I've not said that.
I did query whether expenditure on children is guaranteed to change that.

This is a big question,  but expenditure on children could accomplish a great deal, including exam results, other than spending it directly on education.

When I was a child teachers often did games etc outside school hours. That was withdrawn during some industrial action and never really came back to the same extent. I knew a teacher who moved to a private school recently and he said he was slightly better paid, but was expected to engage in at least one extra-curricular activity.

We also had youth clubs, brownies, guides, scouts, armed forces off shoots, summer activity schemes etc. Most of those had at least some public expenditure as pump-priming. They also benefited from use of public facilities, cheap rents. 

The whole infrastructure for all of that has withered and died and replacing it would be a mammoth task. 

For middle-class children these things have often been replaced by paid activities. These are expensive and often now depend on parents having personal transport to get children there.

25 years ago my daughter was a keen swimmer and trained several times a week. The local authority put up the cost of hiring pools dramatically and I remember the swimming club fees going up to £300 a term. That was a real dilemma - her swimming was now going to cost well over £1000 a year. Many people simply couldn't afford it. 

There is a lot of concern about attainment gaps for children, based on class / income. Children from poorer backgrounds will be said to be behind their peers on starting school. Instead of closing with school support,  this gap continues to grow as they get older. There is some evidence that the gap gets worse during holidays. After the summer holidays children from poorer backgrounds come back to school behind where they were when they left, children from better-off backgrounds don't fall behind, or don't fall behind so much. 

If there is a serious intention to address attainment, and it's often presented as a critical need for a better skilled / educated workforce, then we would need to invest much more in children. 

I'm not sure presenting it as a battle between pensioners and children moves the argument on very much though. 

BlackKnightMonty

My aim was to provide a counterpoint to the ‘woe is me’ WFA messages. And to point out there are other members of society we need to think about.

Nicebeigecardi

Don’t forget that pensioners are also now paying tax on their pensions due to the freezing of the tax allowances.  We have two very small pensions in addition to the state pension.  We now pay tax - so not only have  those pensions decreased, we have lost the fuel allowance, inflation is still rising and fuel is due to increase again in price this autumn.  

Also, pensioners carry out a huge amount of voluntary work and care for their families - priceless to this economy.  

TheBanker

Nicebeigecardi said:

Don’t forget that pensioners are also now paying tax on their pensions due to the freezing of the tax allowances.  We have two very small pensions in addition to the state pension.  We now pay tax - so not only have  those pensions decreased, we have lost the fuel allowance, inflation is still rising and fuel is due to increase again in price this autumn.  

Also, pensioners carry out a huge amount of voluntary work and care for their families - priceless to this economy.  

Paying tax (or more tax) also applies to workers. There are low paid workers who will have started paying tax due to the freeze, and moderately paid workers who are now subject to higher rate tax. But many workers won't have seen their wages rise by as much as the state pension has over the last few years. The problem is that we have had frozen tax thresholds during a period of high inflation. This is affecting everyone, pensioners are not a special case.

I think the system is unfair and broken, and needs fixing for everyone. Nobody, regardless of age, should be struggling to pay their heating bills. Whether this needs a special £200 payment is debatable - I'd prefer to make sure the state pension, pension credit where applicable and the tax system deal with it. This also applies to those below pension age who can't work due to disability or for their reasons, or who work in a low paid job.

In the short term I'm not sure how the government can fix it, given the state of public finances.

westv

If you are paying tax on pensions now then they can't have decreased. They must have gone up in order fir tax to now be payable.

hugheskevi

The tax burden on pensioners is remarkably light.

A pensioner taking an income at the level of the higher rate of tax from a combination of full new State Pension and DC pension via UFPLS would pay a tax rate of slightly over 13%.

In comparison, a worker with a salary at the level of higher rate of tax would pay 21% tax - more than 50% more tax payable despite the same income. That is not taking into account any pension contributions, and that a person of working age is much more likely to have rent/mortgage obligations and more dependents.

JoeCrystal

Nicebeigecardi said:

Don’t forget that pensioners are also now paying tax on their pensions due to the freezing of the tax allowances.  We have two very small pensions in addition to the state pension.  We now pay tax - so not only have  those pensions decreased, we have lost the fuel allowance, inflation is still rising and fuel is due to increase again in price this autumn.  

Also, pensioners carry out a huge amount of voluntary work and care for their families - priceless to this economy.  

Do you understand that you are not paying 20% of your total income as a basic rate taxpayer? I have encountered this misunderstanding at work sometimes (usually when they want to keep their total pay within Personal Allowance out of the mistaken desire to avoid paying 20% tax on their entire income and yet complain that they were not paid enough despite overtime on offer) *facepalm*

Let's only consider BSP on its merit and compare it to the personal allowance (I used aged allowance for those over 65 for the period it exists) from 1990-91 and onwards, proportionally. The percentage has declined since then regarding how generous the personal allowance is. Indeed, we are pretty much back to how it was for a few years from 1990-91. The tax year 2008-09 is the lowest percentage in which the total BSP consume the personal allowance at 52%. (I decide to discount SERPs, SSP and so on to keep the comparison simple)

We are returning to the levels needed after three decades of generosity, and more taxes are likely required. I appreciate that many pensioners are struggling. Still, most pensioners pay income taxes already, and I would much rather focus the precious sum raised on the most vulnerable pensioners.

The government can pull specific levers, but apart from the state pension, a general cash transfer to all prisoners should not be an answer! So, I welcome the removal of generous subsidies; I do wish, however, that a solution could be a specific tariff or something like that so that rather than getting a cash sum from the government, one could get a voucher or a sum applied against the energy bills, especially since we did have such a system in a recent year.

dealyboy

@JoeCrystal said:

Nicebeigecardi said:

Don’t forget that pensioners are also now paying tax on their pensions due to the freezing of the tax allowances.  We have two very small pensions in addition to the state pension.  We now pay tax - so not only have  those pensions decreased, we have lost the fuel allowance, inflation is still rising and fuel is due to increase again in price this autumn.  

Also, pensioners carry out a huge amount of voluntary work and care for their families - priceless to this economy.  

Do you understand that you are not paying 20% of your total income as a basic rate taxpayer? I have encountered this misunderstanding at work sometimes (usually when they want to keep their total pay within Personal Allowance out of the mistaken desire to avoid paying 20% tax on their entire income and yet complain that they were not paid enough despite overtime on offer) *facepalm*

Let's only consider BSP on its merit and compare it to the personal allowance (I used aged allowance for those over 65 for the period it exists) from 1990-91 and onwards, proportionally. The percentage has declined since then regarding how generous the personal allowance is. Indeed, we are pretty much back to how it was for a few years from 1990-91. The tax year 2008-09 is the lowest percentage in which the total BSP consume the personal allowance at 52%. (I decide to discount SERPs, SSP and so on to keep the comparison simple)

We are returning to the levels needed after three decades of generosity, and more taxes are likely required. I appreciate that many pensioners are struggling. Still, most pensioners pay income taxes already, and I would much rather focus the precious sum raised on the most vulnerable pensioners.

The government can pull specific levers, but apart from the state pension, a general cash transfer to all prisoners should not be an answer! So, I welcome the removal of generous subsidies; I do wish, however, that a solution could be a specific tariff or something like that so that rather than getting a cash sum from the government, one could get a voucher or a sum applied against the energy bills, especially since we did have such a system in a recent year.

... my highlight and italics ...
I think you must have a 'crystal' ball Joe ... haha.

whattochoose

Suggestion here that the Christmas bonus should increase from £10 to £200.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/should-10-dwp-christmas-bonus-33652160

Sarahspangles

whattochoose said:

Suggestion here that the Christmas bonus should increase from £10 to £200.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/should-10-dwp-christmas-bonus-33652160

That’s daft, many pensioners will feel they have to give it family when at least the previous payment was nominally for heating costs!