28 Aug
9:44am, 28 Aug 2024
17,702 posts
|
jda
I certainly sympathise with the concept of tax rebate on pension contributions. OTOH effectively deferring your income to minimise tax (rather than paying higher rate now, put it in a pension and only pay lower rate on the later proceeds) is undoubtedly a perk for the rich that the poorer cannot use. Limiting a tax break for higher rate taxpayers isn’t going to cause any poverty or hardship. |
|
28 Aug
9:48am, 28 Aug 2024
17,703 posts
|
jda
I don’t believe it is remotely accurate to suggest that an investment banker will have a poorer pension than a junior civil servant. I wonder what the basis for that claim is?
|
28 Aug
9:51am, 28 Aug 2024
21,737 posts
|
Cerrertonia
jda wrote: Certainly agree with that.
Limiting a tax break for higher rate taxpayers isn’t going to cause any poverty or hardship. |
28 Aug
9:53am, 28 Aug 2024
24,648 posts
|
3M
+1 to that, @Cheg. And also @Cerrertonia. I'm reminded reading these that yet again "we" Fetchies mostly seem to see the world in a very similar way, with similar concerns around issues and some solutions. Whether it's something to do with running being a good proxy for (relatively) left wing views and concern for others, I don't know.....  The issue is people tend to be basicaly selfish, unless you can find a way to harness that for the greater good you're onto a hiding to nothing. Our underlying issue now is to do with the lack of public funding for essential services and utlitities after about 45 years either systematic "individualisation and small State" from the Conservative Governments or of chicken hearted Labour Governments not really being willing to stand up and prevent the rot, and risk loosing their majority again. If there was some way to ensure that sucessive governments of different persuasions wouldn't prat about with any truly useful legislation it'd be a much more stable system. Needs to be written into law, but at a higher level than individual governments can overrule. Written Constitution, anyone? |
|
28 Aug
10:00am, 28 Aug 2024
17,704 posts
|
jda
Any form of proportionality in the electoral system would surely mitigate the worst excesses of flip-flop extremism where a minority can hold the majority to ransom.
|
28 Aug
10:01am, 28 Aug 2024
4,414 posts
|
Cheg
The investment banker example is a stretch. There is a very real and undeniable gulf in the pension provision between public and private. Of course the uber rich in the private sector are absolutely fine. But for the earners between say £30k and £100k in the private sector just won't have comparable pensions to teachers, doctors or police officers. The removal of final salary schemes from almost every single company in the FTSE, and in the private sector in general is proof that they just aren't financially viable when you actually have to pay for them. |
|
28 Aug
10:10am, 28 Aug 2024
24,652 posts
|
3M
It's hard to feel sympathy for those who were hitting their lifetime allowance for pension contributions in their 30s though, isn't it? (Before it was abolished last year, of course, to help out with the problem of senior medics and GPs in particular leaving the profession in their 40s! Just coincidence it also benefited a significant number of wealthy Conservative Party donors, MPs and their supporters.....)
|
|
28 Aug
10:13am, 28 Aug 2024
21,738 posts
|
Cerrertonia
jda wrote: Their pension contributions are capped at £10K per year. Even over 40 years, that doesn't remotely come close to buying the equivalent to a junior civil servants pension. Of course, the investment banker will simply accumulate money and assets outside the pension system instead, so I'm not suggesting that they'll spend their old age in penury. But we do now have a fairly pronounced difference between public and private sector pension provision for younger people compared to the case 15-20 years ago. I don’t believe it is remotely accurate to suggest that an investment banker will have a poorer pension than a junior civil servant. I wonder what the basis for that claim is? One of the many good things that the last Labour government did was to set up Nest, which now looks after the private pension savings of 12 million mostly lower paid workers and contributions from approaching 1 million employers. It has very low overheads and low charges relative to other pensions schemes and has clearly been a big success. Away from the talk on pension taxation, I reckon we might see some consolidation of many smaller public sector schemes into fewer larger ones to save money along the Nest model. Similarly some relaxation of the rules about what pension funds are allowed to do (i.e being forced to buy gilts/ lend money to the government) should allow them to produce better long-term returns for their members. And the quid pro quo for that might be that pension funds are required to invest some minimum percentage of savers' money in the UK stock market - currently something like 10% of their total funds are in big US tech companies and less than 5% of the UK stock market is owned by UK pension funds. |
28 Aug
5:11pm, 28 Aug 2024
49 posts
|
Dubairunner
Caveat I’m not a UK tax payer and haven’t been for many years, but higher tax rate tax payers are not wealthy, without checking roughly 50k a year? What about the millions living on benefits with no intention of getting a job? That would save billions!!!! |
28 Aug
5:30pm, 28 Aug 2024
69,501 posts
|
LindsD
Source please for the 'millions'
|
Useful Links
FE accepts no responsibility for external links. Or anything, really.Related Threads
-
Fantasy General Election
Jul 2024
-
EU Referendum - In or Out? Vote here
Aug 2018
-
March to Parliament Against Brexit - Sat 2nd July
Jun 2016
-
EU Referendum
Feb 2016
-
Ads on Fetch - anyone else getting Leave and Remain?!
Feb 2017
-
The Environment Thread :-)
Oct 2024
-
Economics
Aug 2023
-
Dear Scottish Fetchies
Jan 2023
-
Any economists out there - question
Oct 2022
-
Power and exploitation - please check my sanity
Oct 2018
