It's bad enough that my two Company pensions schemes are both taxed.....one for 25yrs service the other for 20 years....pensions that I paid extra into to boost them up so I could a better return on.
Well again it’s not the fact that pensions are taxed: contributions are tax deductible at your marginal rate and you then pay tax on the pension payments. It’s the fact tax thresholds are too low. It wasn’t so bad when inflation was low but with it at 10% and with wages following, it’s dragging millions of already poorly paid into tax and relatively ordinary people into 40% tax.
You already pay tax on state pensions if you have other work related pensions to add to the income. The State pension counts agqinst the free pay. Both of my works pensions are taxed as well but as you say notdistant the contributions were not taxed when taken so that is swings and roundabouts.
My private pensions came from my earnings which where taxed when earned over the years....and when I received it back as a monthly pension it was taxed again....that to me seems unfair that it is taxed a second time.
That still doesn't sound right to me so I just looked up taxes on pension contributions. According to the Government page up to a maximum contribtion of £40k per year is tax exempt. However, as I said in previous post once the pension is drawn then tax is payable on the amount received. I don't get how you would have paid tax on the contributions in the first place or in your words taxed twice unless you were paying in shed loads a year.
Looking at pics of the concert at HP lately how come the upper Mayflower was packed to the rafters but not allowed for football?
Errrm I suspect the people that came to see Sea Power and Muse are a tad more flexible, both in mind and body, than the (very) senior citizens who typically inhabit the Mayflower stand for football matches.
You get tax relief on pension contributions while you are in employment, even if your marginal rate is in the higher bands. That's fair but there has been talk in some quarters of limiting that to basic rate, which would be iniquitous and ultimately damaging to the state itself. The relief that was taken away by Gordon Brown was on dividends received whilst your contributions were in the fund. Obviously that's very significant because the whole idea of such a scheme is that the employee and employer pay contributions into a pension scheme where they are invested in stocks and shares. Because pension funds need to find cash to pay pensioners who've already retired, they like to hold shares which provide regular and pretty much guaranteed dividend payments. That's why pension funds like water companies and supermarkets - businesses that aren't going to grow rapidly, indeed are rather boring, but do generate very steady cash flows whatever's happening to the economy. They are the never ending cash dispensers, Taking away the dividend relief destroyed that model and triggered the end of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes. That's unless you work for the Government of course, where they are still the norm and push up employment costs by 20 or 30% compared to equivalent workers in the private sector. Aright for some Gordon. Thanks a lot. https://pensionsandsavings.com/pens...id-should-be-a-warning-to-the-new-chancellor/ Ultimately, robbing pension schemes just transfers the risk of poverty stricken pensioners sleeping in doorways back to the Government. This hasn't got to its final position yet as many those retiring now still have DB schemes in their pension history. Eventually, we'll get to the situation where all those retiring from private sector jobs will only have defined contribution pensions and then the proverbial will start to hit the fan.
Thanks notDistant for explaining that to me....it just felt like I was being taxed twice. After changing jobs at the height of Thatchers... 'war'...with Scargill..... I found that my wages dropped dramatically and for a few years we were off-setting lack of wages from our savings and adding money to our pension payments to bolster it up.....when I retired in 2004 my pensions paid a surprising monthly amount....add my state pension as well I found that my pensions paid me more than I ever earned whilst working.
Well done for thinking ahead: many don't, including me in a way. I did make some AVC's but I got lucky at being promoted into a another division which had a, what shall I call it, a second tier pension scheme, which my back service was transferred into. Funnily enough, I had an annual report from one of my schemes today. It's a dead scheme: no new members have joined for years as the employer was acquired by a bigger group years ago. It therefore has 3,000 pensioners receiving pensions and another 2,000 deferred members (entitled to a pension but not yet of pensionable age). It's therefore "de-risking" by moving into low-risk investments so that eventually the pension liabilities are fully secured on what amounts to an insurance basis, It paid out £20m to members in pensions plus £3m lump sums and a little bit in death benefits. It received £83m from the employer and £17m in investment income. That figure of £83m jumps out at you: £16,600 per member even though none of them are still in its employment. That's how expensive DB schemes are. The other point is that £17m on investment income has been taxed, which it wasn't before Gordon Brown's raid. For a live scheme, with working members and new members coming in and therefore a more active investment policy taking advantage of more years to spread risk over, that number would be higher and the tax take higher. It was a ideal target for Brown: he got money in to buy votes with almost immediately but few understood what he'd done and it would be years or decades before the results hit people's wallets, It also backs up the argument that lower wages in the public sector need to be set off the far more generous DB pension benefits. The average private sector DC pension probably takes 5% of wages from the employee and 5% from the employer, whereas a public sector DB scheme takes between 30 and 40% in total with 2/3 or even 3/4 coming from the employer. You don't have to be a genius to work out there are going to be some very poor pensioners.....
FFS here I am, eating my muesli and expecting to watch learned analysis of the momentous world events that have occurred overnight. It’s been a poor period for those interested in “news” with the best part of a fortnight devoted by the BBC to something called the “Eurovision Dressing Up In Stupid Costumes And Singing Vapid Songs Competition “. Now the main item in the BBC is some presenter of an equally vapid TV magazine programme, who, horror of horrors in the 21at century, had an affair with a man of the same sex. Switching to Sky News, usually a bastion of serious journalism, albeit punctuated by adverts for Qatar Airways, I find Sky is also wall to wall Philip Lightweight-Wasshisname. I despair. I wonder what’s on ITV New? Skateboarding pets I expect.
I knew there must be a good reason waiting to jump out at me and tell me why I don't watch breakfast telly....Politics Live at 12.15pm is my first venture of the day to look at the gogglebox,. The only Schofield I know is a rugby league player.
Big news at the moment is....... 1.....Allardyce leaves Leeds after FOUR games....that's quite good when you consider how many games he was in charge of ENGLAND....ONE....before his cheating ways bit his bum. 2.....Harry Maguire in the twilight of his career is offered TENMILLIONPOUNDS to leave....life can be tough for footballers.....decisions, decisions, decisions.
And what exactly surprises you in all of this? Facebook, WhatsApp, Tweetyland, Gossip Mags that constantly tell stories of the famous. All of them have more sway in the modern world than anything else. Like it or not the general public are obsessed with Celebrity. There is of course also the great British pastime of build them up and knock them down again. On a personal level I really couldn't care less who bonked who when or why. I don't care if they are same sex or even one human and one not. It's of no concern to me and I therefore never listen to it or read about it. I do however draw a line if it involves lies and more lies and the integrity of our suposed leaders. War, raging inflation, poverty, strikes and like stories all gave way to the main bit of news on the BBC tonight. That was the first 10 minutes of a 30 minute programme devoted to Phil Whateverhisname and his interview. I watch a bit of Have I got News for You normally which can sometimes be mildly amusing. Even that tonight was partly about this subject and I did learn that he was "Outed" if that is the word for this by ............The Daily Mail.
I've never been more pleased than I am know that I have never watched breakfast TV. I am just truly amazed on what has been going on with ITV's This Morning programme. Listening to Paul Schofield bleating on about being suicidal and his thoughts on the safety of the young man he had an affair with. Holly Willoughby being upset that Schofield had lied to her. What a load of sanctimonious claptrap that is being dealt up here by these two. Where is the thought of what his ex-wife and children are going through....how humiliating it must be for them to have all this being discussed on national TV and press. With Schofield and Willoughby it is all.....me, me, me. Just get rid of the programme and replace it with something else that is more programme oriented and less celebrated icon lead.
You might possibly have heard the story the Dambusters raid by 617 Squadron, who, flying at extremely low level, dropped bombs weighing 6 tonnes each, which had to explode in contact with or just feet away from their target and precisely in the middle of it, 50 ft under water so as to focus the blast. Several aircraft had to attack each dam and even then, one of the dams survived. This rarely mentioned event illustrates how hard it is to bring down a dam. The Dnipro river lies between Ukrainian forces expected to launch an offensive against Russian forces in the other side. The dam provided a road crossing for the new tanks given by the west to Ukraine to meet Russian forces that could only muster one WW2 tank for the recent Red Square parade. Its destruction not only eliminates that crossing but floods the land below to make it impassable to heavy vehicles. Please indicate which you believe has happened: The Ukrainians obstructed their own offensive by bringing down a massive concrete structure with a few artillery shells fired from miles away or The Russians have obstructed the offensive by blowing the thing up with carefully placed demolition charges. How dumb does Putin think we are?
How dumb have we got to get before the west really get involved.....we can't expect Ukraine to do it by themselves. Putin's lying to Russia must be undone and the indoctrination of the people reversed somehow.
You going to sign up and put your uniform on then? Doubt it. Easy to send someone else though. What about your grandson joining. Should he be first over the top to charge the line? It is one thing to verbally condemn Putin which is right of course but quite another to "get really involved". Of course Putin had the Dam blown up and who really believes much he says anyway. Why wouldn't they blow it up if it's a strategic target given they consider themselves at war. What else would you expect them to do.
It's the bare-faced institutionalised nature of the lying though. Just have a watch of this, especially the bit on casualties and war-crimes. Nobody's talking about deploying NATO forces but we need to support Ukraine with materiel to defend itself - particularly the much talked about F16's. This is hardly a rash step: it entered service in 1978 and to all intents and purposes, production ceased in 2017 after an order from Iraq, hardly a top-rank ally, was completed..
Oh and we should be increasing defence expenditure to 3% of GDP. The “Peace Dividend” expected after the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the USSR hasn’t materialised and the situation is actually worse now we have an aggressive regime in China. Germany has done it and so must we.
