State pension : pensioner supporting younger wife

bryanb

Hopefully 7 day W/E won't read the above, it could be considered unfair.

EdInvestor

Sterlingtimes wrote: »

Up until the time when the legislation changes the wife and husband may choose to operate as a unit (a couple)...
This has been the way in which society has dealt with this problem for many decades.

It hasn't, in fact. The tax and benefits system changed from being couple-based to individual-based in the 1980s. Anyone with a "couple mindset" is likely to find that they miss out quite seriously - for example you often find cases of retired couples where all the taxable income is under the man's name, so he loses his age allowance, while the wife's tax allowance is unused and wasted, costing them thousands of pounds a year.

bryanb

Ed Investor, I can't agree with "loses his age allowance" Did you mean uses up all his age allowance?

djohn2002uk

margaretclare wrote: »

If you look at what I actually wrote, it was mainly the sexist terminology and the demeaning assumptions behind this discussion that I object to, NOT the fact that someone is getting something.

It may have been tongue-in-cheek when the OP wrote things like 'sending his wife out to work' or 'paying for the whims of a younger wife'. Some men still think these comments are funny. Personally I think we should all have moved on beyond this puerile kind of humour.Margaret

Margaret, I apologise. I should have read your posts more carefully.
Now that I have though, I would say that although your beliefs (over many years) regarding womens rights are commendable, you should realise that many women still do not subscribe 100% to those beliefs, and my wife is one.
She is her own person and I wouldn't even attempt to make her mind up on anything unless asked to, but she has always frowned on most (but not all) of the "Womens Rights" and "Burning their bras" brigade, and she maintains that she doesn't know anyone with differing views to hers, apart from within our bowls club where we were/are in favour of equallity. And believe me, she knows lots of people.
I don't want this to detract from my apology by the way.

EdInvestor

bryanb wrote: »

Ed Investor, I can't agree with "loses his age allowance" Did you mean uses up all his age allowance?

Age allowance is progressively withdrawn at a punitive rate after income gets to around 21k, until it reverts to the normal personal allowance.

Thus say if a (traditional) retired couple gets a total joint pension income of 28k, of which 3k is in the wife's name and 25k in the husband's name, they will pay around 2-3k more tax than if the income was split 7k under the wife's name and 21k under the husband's name, using the wife's full age allowance and avoiding age allowance clawback from the husband.

Over the next couple of years the age allowance is going up from around 7k per person to around 10k per person so that a couple over 65 will have be able to have tax-free income of 20k - but only if they both use their allowances to the full.

So it will make good sense to equalise taxable incomes between spouses up to the 10k level where possible - for instance by making additional pension contributions into a plan for the spouse with a low projected taxable retirement income, rather than contributing to a larger pension for the bigger earner in the latter working years.

seven-day-weekend

bryanb wrote: »

Hopefully 7 day W/E won't read the above, it could be considered unfair.

Actually I do think it is unfair.

And there is no need to be nasty. I haven't been.

bryanb

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. Thank goodness I don't have sufficient retirement income for it to happen to me!

bryanb

Sorry 7 day, Wasn't being nasty (perhaps sarcastic) sorry anyway if it offended.

seven-day-weekend

Apology accepted.

seven-day-weekend

EdInvestor wrote: »

Thanks bryanb, very helpful.

IMHO the adult dependant's allowance makes more sense if viewed in the context of the married woman's stamp.It may well be that many of the female "dependants" for whom this is claimed did in fact work during their lives but failed to accrue any pension rights ecause they paid the wrong stamp.

We also should bear in mind that HRP only came in 1974, so anyone off work before that got no pension rights even if they paid the full stamp, plus many women found it hard to notch up a full year's NI contribution because of the way the system worked.

One also suspects the existence of the allowance is the reason why so many people think there is a "married couple's pension".

The changes in 2010 are to be welcomed because at last all these anomalies which discriminate against women will be removed.But in the meantime the allowance seems more like an arrangment to at least partally redress some of the historical anomalies, rathet than a freebie for the undeserving.

That's a much better way of looking at it than 'dependents' .

Thank you Edinvestor.