There have been two seperate calls recently for the budget to include major changes to the way pensions are taxed, each coming at the topic from a completely difference angle.
The Telegraph reported on a call from the Office for Tax Simplification, an independent body working under the aegis of Treasury, for the state pension to be made exempt from income tax.
James Kirkup writes:
In a report to Treasury ministers, the advisers said that there was a “patchwork of allowances and rules which many in their later years find very confusing” and that taxing the basic state pension made the system significantly more complicated.
“Many of those who do understand that it is taxable feel that this is unjust, given that they have contributed through the national insurance system through their working life,” the report said. Among the options identified by the OTS was: “Exempt the state pension from tax altogether.”
A full basic state pension is worth £5,311 a year. Exempting that sum from the 20 per cent basic rate of income tax would be worth around £1,060.
The recommendation is one of many in a report explicitly concerned with highlighting “problem areas and possible directions of travel for the future”, but it has been leapt upon by the paper — and it’s readers, over 80 per cent of whom want pensioners to be exempt from income tax, according to an entirely unscientific poll on the site.
While one group is pushing for less tax on pensioners, another sees them — or their pensions, at least — as a potential source of revenue.
The Times reported (£) yesterday that, in exchange for dropping proposals for a mansion tax, the Liberal Democrats have secured a government review of the tax relief on pension contributions from top-rate taxpayers. Richard Murphy explains the logic in The Guardian:
If I decide to make a contribution to a pension (I’m self employed) I say to my pension company I want to pay £5,000 this year. There are two forms of tax relief: one is at source and one at higher rate. So if I decide to pay £5,000, I actually pay £4,000 and and get topped up 20 per cent in tax relief. If I’m higher rate tax payer then I put that payment into my tax return and as a result I get tax relief at 40 per cent so I get another 1k of tax saving. At the moment there are lifetime limits of around £1.4m. For those over £150,000 there is an annual limit to their contribution of £50,000. This means their tax bill goes down by 25k. People earning over £150,000 get a benefit of £25,000 at a time when the government is saying that the maximum any family can get in welfare benefits is £26,000.
When you come to retire, your pension schemes requires you to buy an annuity, a way of paying you back over your expected life. That’s the money you paid in, plus interest. You get get taxed on those payments. The reason you get taxed is that you didn’t pay at the time you earned it. It’s deferred tax. But if you were liable to higher rate taxes when you earned it, you are likely to pay basic rate when you receive it.
As Murphy points out later, the problem with removing this relief is that it would lead to double taxation — being taxed when you earn your wage, and then again however-many-years later when it is payed out as a pension. His response is that double taxation is a normal part of tax, since “we tax income then spending”; but if that is the case, then this change would lead to triple taxation.
Instead, these two measures would go nicely hand-in-hand. If the tax on pensions were removed at the same time as the relief on pension contributions is shrunk, then double — or triple — taxation would cease to be a problem. And it could still be a net increase in revenue, since it would trade income tax on pensions, which is almost always basic rate, with income tax on wages, which is often a lot higher.
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