Should rich OAPs give back benefits

[Quillan]

Your right Hoddy. I saw the other week when they were talking about the new social payments system that a single person needed £350 (ish all in - can't rememebr the exact figure) to live on. Does this mean pensions will be going up? I don't think so, it seems a pensioner, who has possibly paid in all their life, can live off less.

[powerdesal]

There is a basic assumption that by the time someone reaches pension age they have no mortgage to find and that they have accrued some savings to supplement the state pension.

A single non-pension person has to fund accommodation and has no savings to fall back on.

The assumptions are, of course, false in many cases.

In the past there was the perception that the state pension would be sufficient to live on and that's effectively how it was 'sold' to previous generations. Perhaps not a particularly good standard of living but certainly not abject poverty.

Most of the 'older' generation realised that 'saving for old age' was also a necessity. Unfortunately the rise in cost of living, particularly fuel costs, together with extremely low returns on savings have effectively 'moved the goal posts' to a dramatic degree.

[idun]

It is true that I know lots of men that have retired and at least when they were out at work they were 'doing' something. Their wives however, have not actually retired, even though they get their pensions and have become the skivvy and general attendant to their lazy xxxxxx husbands.

In these cases, and believe me these women on the surface do not appear stupid, rather clever actually, but have ended up with an immovable and lazy force that they can do little about. If I only knew of one couple like this, then I would not have mentioned it, sadly I know quite a few.

Would not do for me.

[dwmcn]

Norman,

Can I have your WFP? We don't have central heating. On the other hand, our house is 'worth' over £400,000 and is paid for.

David

[NormanH]

Sell it and buy a warm centrally heated modern flat...and buy me one with the change. My place is only worth about 45000€ even it it were sell able[:)]

[dwmcn]

Betty,

I am a retired US citizen and have been living in England permanently for nealy 30 years. I get a monthly SS payment from the US and my British wife, who has been in the US for about ten days in her life, also gets one because she is married to me. Should she give it back? I have never paid into the British system, but get free prescriptions and free eye tests, but the glasses cost money.

David

[dwmcn]

Norman,

If we weren't so old, we would sell up and move to France.

David

[YCCMB]

Why do you assume for even a nanosecond that I should be able to pronounce on what you should or shouldn't do?  I really don't care about unique or special individual cases, nor did I suggest that anyone should give anything back to the UK, the US or any other country. I think I simply pointed out that I thought it absurd that people (including, I should add, my husband) who are over 60 but still in work should get free prescriptions. I haven't a scooby why you ask me about yourself, your wife, or your specific arrangements or circumstances.[8-)]

[Rabbie]

With regard to the so-called universal benefits like WFA and free prescriptions for the over 60s it may well be that it is cheaper administratively to pay them to everyone rather than to means test them. It may also require legislation to change the present rules so in that case I doubt there will be any change

[Thibault]

The simplest answer is to make WFA subject to income tax, which it isn't at present.  Thus the less well off pensioners get it net of tax as at present, whilst the better off pay tax on it.  This would not need any further civil servants, or 'red tape' structures to administer it.

The problem of these little 'perks' came about (as someone said earlier) when the government of the time refused to increase the basic state pension and instead created a series of 'additions'.  The current government has put in place an increased basic state pension which is coming on stream in a couple of years, so presumably there could be an argument for getting rid of the 'extras'.

[dwmcn]

Betty,

And I don't care what you and your husband get.

David

[dwmcn]

PS I won't bother you again.

[NickP]

I'm not interested in what anybody apart from myself and mine gets, and I ain't giving nufink back. They took money off me for many years and as I said on another post the deal was you pay this and we give you that. I kept my side of the bargain, let them keep theirs. Also remember IDS is married to a multi millionaire, let him show good will by giving some of his salary back, after all he's on money for old rope. Of course if anybody wants to return money to the government or to charity, good on you, but as said I wont be joining you, and I have no conscience about my mind set at all [:D]

[idun]

Thibault, the WFA taxed, all that paper work for £40 per household??? Is that worth it.

And then there is the bus pass, would they want to tax that too and how as some use it a lot and others less and some shouldn't take it as they hardly use it. I reckon that should be like some mobile phones, if unused or rarely that it expires.

Yes increase the state pension to about £200 a week and no perks, I don't think that many would complain about that. And then people decide what they do with the money they are getting.

Ofcourse I could put the cat amoungst the pigeons and suggest that the state pension was as in France and people got to an upper limit depending on earnings over the last 30 years. So some would get little and some would do more than OK, ah but I forgot they'd have to have had to be paying far more in in the first place! NI after all is for many things including health care.

IDS, what did I hear the other day, he claimed  for a £38.50 breakfast at 'our' expense, MP's expenses you know, he is disgusting and obviously greedy, buying food like that with 'our' money and is absolutely the wrong person to mention what he calls benefits, whilst he pigs in the trough of MP's expenses!

[YCCMB]

[quote user="dwmcn"]

Betty,

And I don't care what you and your husband get.

David

[/quote]

How very mature.

[powerdesal]

NickP

I'm with you on the 'not giving anything back'.

Having been screwed by the total inefficiency of HMRC in respect of my wife's pension I have zero sympathy towards the call to give something back.

They could triple the WFA and it would still be years before we recover what was robbed from us by the clowns at HMRC.

[Quillan]

Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper just to kill everyone off at 65? Seems they screw you when you work and when your ready to retire they screw you again. I have no moral problem when the time comes of getting all I can, I paid in for it and I am entitled. I shall even get a bus pass, won't use it but because I can have it I will. None of it will make up what Brown stole from my pension pot but it will make me feel a little better, only a little mind.

[idun]

Please explain, 'what Brown stole from my pension'!

What I do know is that people in the UK can take a huge lump tax free from their pension pot, and I will never understand that as long as I draw breath.

[Quillan]

[quote user="idun"]Please explain, 'what Brown stole from my pension'!

What I do know is that people in the UK can take a huge lump tax free from their pension pot, and I will never understand that as long as I draw breath.
[/quote]

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-1603390/Browns-pension-raid-cost-savers-pound100bn.html

For other 'sources' try googling Brown raids pension funds or try the other link below.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enFR519FR519&q=brown+raids+pension+funds

To put the amount he stole in to amounts people can understand it was initially the equivalent of 50 years of Tesco's annual profits at £2bn a year or the entire economic output of Ireland (in that year). In the first 'hit' he took between £100bn and £150bn, some say even more as the exact figure has never been released. On top of that the effect that quantitative easing has had is pretty bad, last year very few pension funds actually grew and those that did by only a miniscule amount.

He did it three times, first in 1997 then again in 2006 and again in 2008. We are talking pension funds here not individual pensions so that's anyone who had or has a private pension pot from an ordinary manual worker to a company director or chairperson.

 

[NormanH]

According to the article:

Before 1997, a pension fund could, for example, be paid £80 in dividends

and get £20 in cash back from the Treasury in tax relief. On Budget

Day, 3 July 1997, Mr Brown axed the tax relief.

In other words he simply stopped tax relief, which of course had to come from other tax payers.

He didn't actually take anybody's money..

[nomoss]

[quote user="NormanH"]According to the article:
Before 1997, a pension fund could, for example, be paid £80 in dividends and get £20 in cash back from the Treasury in tax relief. On Budget Day, 3 July 1997, Mr Brown axed the tax relief.

In other words he simply stopped tax relief, which of course had to come from other tax payers.
He didn't actually take anybody's money..
[/quote]

Of course, no longer giving something does not constitute taking something away, but

 

No longer giving money by stopping tax relief for people investing in pensions does sound rather similar to giving less money to people with more bedrooms than they need, which Labour now calls a tax.

Can you really have it both ways?

 

 

[dwmcn]

Betty,

Look, I came to this forum because you are supposed to behave here and not be nasty to other posters. I use another forum where posters swear at each other and are quite nasty. No complaining to the mods stops it. There was program on the BBC recently on The Digital Human about behavior on forums becoming worse, with threats and bad language. I was only replying to your post to tell you about our experience with old age payments. If you can't accept that, tough.

David

[idun]

dwmcn, I have no idea what you are on about now. Betty has posted and given her opinion about benefits and that is that.. We all have our ideas about this and our own circumstances and we may or may not highlight how we live and the choices we make.

All Betty said, was that she didn't care about 'your' particular circumstances, why would she? why would I?  you have obviously made your choices about where you live and how you live.

This thread for me, and maybe only for me, was more or less about the paradoxes of how the government treats, what I imagine apart from election time, what they consider the great unwashed...........whilst most politicans are greedy and grabbing what is at the end of the day, 'benefits', not all I grant you, but all too many never the less.

[Rabbie]

[quote user="nomoss"]

[quote user="NormanH"]According to the article:
Before 1997, a pension fund could, for example, be paid £80 in dividends and get £20 in cash back from the Treasury in tax relief. On Budget Day, 3 July 1997, Mr Brown axed the tax relief.

In other words he simply stopped tax relief, which of course had to come from other tax payers.
He didn't actually take anybody's money..
[/quote]

Of course, no longer giving something does not constitute taking something away, but

 

No longer giving money by stopping tax relief for people investing in pensions does sound rather similar to giving less money to people with more bedrooms than they need, which Labour now calls a tax.

Can you really have it both ways?

[/quote]Lets just clarify what he did. He didn't stop tax relief on peoples contributions. He did stop tax relief on the investment income coming into the pension fund So the question now is "Should you get two lots of tax relief on your pension contributions?" I have an open mind on this one now I am retired and have my pension.

[dwmcn]

idun,

And I replied to Betty to tell her my experience. After all, this is a forum for an exchange of ideas, or I thought it was. As I said, I don't expect nastiness here or I wouldn't have posted. The language and nastiness on another forum I use would shock most posters here.

Like you, I think most (maybe all) politicians are out for all they can get. I quit the Lib Dems after many years of being a member, even though being an American I can't vote, because of the coalition and 'problems' with MPs and Lords. I take and keep anything any government wants to give me.

I forgot to say that I read about this forum in Living France msagazine.

David