Comments on: Top earners cost taxpayers £22bn in pension tax relief

By: TPA concede higher rate pensions tax relief is ‘problem’ | ToUChstone blog: A public policy blog from the TUC

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:09:41 +0000

[...] is a rationale for tax relief on pensions as I set out here and here. And of course, a tax incentive to save will provide more help if you choose to save [...]

By: Hamish

Hamish — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:10:25 +0000

Interesting that you should misquote the basic rate of income tax.
You seem to want to forget the Budget in which the basic rate was lowered to 20%, perhaps because it also abolished the 10% rate.

By: Web links for 14th September 2009 | ToUChstone blog: A public policy blog from the TUC

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:03:16 +0000

[...] Top earners cost taxpayers £22bn in pension tax relief Nigel has a guest post up on Left Foot Forward about how tax relief on pensions works, and the case for introducing minimum tax rates. Related posts (automatically generated):Pensions tax reliefWill the hit on pensions tax relief affect savings?A £200,000 pension the norm for senior directors [...]

By: Matthew Taylor

Matthew Taylor — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:55:04 +0000

It also makes no sense to talk of other people “…effectively contributing that 40p.”, still less to say it “…costs just 60p to put a pound in your pension.”

These statements only become true if you accept two predicates: 1) All earned income is the property of the state; and 2) Any money not taken by the state as tax is given by the state to the individual.

Aside from full blown Communists – not exactly “progressives” – I don’t know of many people who would accept either premise.

By: Marcus Cotswell

Marcus Cotswell — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:41:09 +0000

But … hang on a minute … these ‘top earners’ (myself included – I earn the princely sum of £45k a year and am therefore presumably categorised as an enemy of the people) do then pay tax on the income they get in retirement. Pensions tax relief is tax deferred, not tax withheld. Do you want to go away and do the maths again, taking this into account? Or is the commitment of this so-called ‘evidence-based’ blog actually just lip service?

By: Pete Bowers

Pete Bowers — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:26:09 +0000

RT @HouseOfTwits: RT @leftfootfwd Top earners cost taxpayers £22bn in pension tax relief http://bit.ly/pDCb5