Paying the most I can into a pension - daft idea?

ali_bear

Nah, it's not going to happen, I don't believe they will touch the TLFS jut let it get dragged lower in real terms. Until .. the next general election when no doubt one of the major parties will be promising to increase the TLFS, to say, 300k? Trying not to be political otherwise the mods will hit delete on the thread 

Hoenir

MiserlyMartin said:

One thing that I was thinking about was if the government started to means test the state pension.

Would the tax saving cover the cost of employing an army of public of public servants to undertake the task. With the freezing of personal tax allowances has increasingly become a moot point. 

Nebulous2

QrizB said:

MiserlyMartin said:

One thing that I was thinking about was if the government started to means test the state pension. How likely would it be that they would say if you had a private pension of 'X' or more, you will not get the state pension?

IMO the most likely (of a number of rather unlikely scenarios) would be a "pensioner tax" similar to the "graduate tax" aka student loan repayments.

For example 5% of extra income tax for those over SPA, starting at eg. £35k (like the WFP clawback).

I've seen ideas like that being floated, generally combined with additional help for care costs.

Either additional income tax for pensioners, adding in National Insurance over state pension age and / or removing the distinction between earned and unearned income. 

hugheskevi

Hoenir said:

MiserlyMartin said:

One thing that I was thinking about was if the government started to means test the state pension.

Would the tax saving cover the cost of employing an army of public of public servants to undertake the task. With the freezing of personal tax allowances has increasingly become a moot point. 

It would depend on the terms of the means-test, but with State Pension expenditure being £153bn p/a and the wage bill of the entire Civil Service being around £20bn (call it £30bn total rem to account for pension and employer NICs, and of that DWP would be about £5bn p/a), it would almost certainly raise more than it cost to administer, unless set at a very high income level.