They take 20% of any private pension over the reduced tax allowance .
True, so any reduction in state pension becomes a double income tax for pensioners. In other words, a pensioner with a £25k income will get less than a worker with a £25k income.
Touching anything like this will be political poison for a while. The media clearly had an agenda against Starmer on the whole freebies issue. That was going on for years before Labour, with Reform and Tories also receiving gifts at the same time, so to create such a fuss shows there was an agenda at play. But in that environment, Starmer really shot himself in the foot over the way the removal of the winter fuel allowance was sold to people. That has felt like the beginning of the end for Starmer and was only months into his time as PM.
Any future PM will be looking at that thinking they need to leave pensions and other pensioner income well alone if they are to survive.
The big problem is now most private pension are drawdown, and all you do is retire early & max out drawdowns during that period so you retain as much state pension as possible. So it just costs government more because they don't really save on pension costs but also lose tax revenues from workers leaving workforce. Then no doubt the new retirees will then moan about us then having to import labour from abroad as everyone is retiring early.
That is a very good point. I was thinking of the point of view of my pension as that is one of the few defined benefit schemes around now. If I retire early, I get a certain amount per year and the state pension adds to that later.
But as you say, for people on defined contribution pensions, it creates a massive incentive to make sure you don't get his by any means testing. You will have a rush of people replacing their glazing, getting solar panels, replacing the boiler, getting solar panels, etc, at 66. Get all the big spends out the way before the state pension. Camper vans are expensive, but are a pretty good investment, but I don't think they would show on traditional means testing.
It would make it a game that is easy to play.
Young persons railcard?
Who decides on criteria for the needy? Government quango?
This was all explained to him yesterday, but he has chosen to ignore it.
And ultimately it is not going to change. That is a key point they are ignoring. No government is going to spend time and money on anything that tells private businesses who they can or can not offer discounts to. There is zero benefit to the government. It will not save the country money or gain money for the chancellor. Most people will not like it and businesses will not like it.
The natural conclusion to this thread is people just accepting it is how it is going to be, regardless of them liking it or not and realise two main things. First, they will get these benefits eventually. Or if I'm wrong and they do get their wish and someone does implement a discount law for businesses, it will take years to implement (these things always do) and will likely have limited effect on the pensioners of today who they like to brand as wealthy, and start to disappear as those having the tough life now get closer to pension age.
