Just how much of a Tory is George Osborne?
As everyone knows, George Osborne is a Conservative who likes to cite Margaret Thatcher as his political hero. Yet ironically, he is fast shaping up into something quite different – one of the most redistributional and interventionist chancellors of the modern age. That position may be confirmed in the next Budget by a £30 billion further raid on pension tax reliefs.
But first, the backstory. Once upon a time, Britain used to have a relatively good and robust occupational pensions system. I’m not sure it was ever the “envy of the world”, as was frequently suggested, but certainly it seemed broadly to work in providing the bulk of UK employees from the shop floor upwards with a reasonable pension in retirement
Then three things happened. First, the idea of jobs for life went out the door, with employment becoming ever less secure. This, in turn, made employers less willing than they had been to provide pension benefits as an incentive for long service.
Second, life expectancy began to far exceed what the actuaries had assumed, making the provision of final salary pension schemes increasingly expensive, in many cases, prohibitively so. But most important of all, governments couldn’t help but meddle, chopping and changing policy from one year to the next, some times with good intentions, but often simply for the purpose of boosting short term tax revenues. With virtually all these interventions, the consequences were disastrous, until eventually they broke the system entirely.
From the Treasury’s point of view, this makes perfect sense. Upfront pension tax relief is estimated to “cost” the Revenue around £50 billion a year, virtually enough to eradicate Britain’s Budget deficit in one fell swoop. Never mind that this would be a windfall only of timing, bringing forward tax revenue that would in any case be paid by pensioners at some stage in the future; it still makes a tempting target for a chancellor desperate to achieve his totemic goal of a budget surplus. (AtW's comment - that money will be taken out from City's coffers, money that help maintain stock bubble)
Just how much of a Tory is George Osborne? - Telegraph
How much of a Tory??
Correct answer - 100% Pure Tory Scum!
Gotto love it really - buy middle class vote with promise to increase high tax threshold to pathetic £50k and then totally rob them of other stuff they had more than making up for the "gift", which is yet to materialise!
As everyone knows, George Osborne is a Conservative who likes to cite Margaret Thatcher as his political hero. Yet ironically, he is fast shaping up into something quite different – one of the most redistributional and interventionist chancellors of the modern age. That position may be confirmed in the next Budget by a £30 billion further raid on pension tax reliefs.
But first, the backstory. Once upon a time, Britain used to have a relatively good and robust occupational pensions system. I’m not sure it was ever the “envy of the world”, as was frequently suggested, but certainly it seemed broadly to work in providing the bulk of UK employees from the shop floor upwards with a reasonable pension in retirement
Then three things happened. First, the idea of jobs for life went out the door, with employment becoming ever less secure. This, in turn, made employers less willing than they had been to provide pension benefits as an incentive for long service.
Second, life expectancy began to far exceed what the actuaries had assumed, making the provision of final salary pension schemes increasingly expensive, in many cases, prohibitively so. But most important of all, governments couldn’t help but meddle, chopping and changing policy from one year to the next, some times with good intentions, but often simply for the purpose of boosting short term tax revenues. With virtually all these interventions, the consequences were disastrous, until eventually they broke the system entirely.
From the Treasury’s point of view, this makes perfect sense. Upfront pension tax relief is estimated to “cost” the Revenue around £50 billion a year, virtually enough to eradicate Britain’s Budget deficit in one fell swoop. Never mind that this would be a windfall only of timing, bringing forward tax revenue that would in any case be paid by pensioners at some stage in the future; it still makes a tempting target for a chancellor desperate to achieve his totemic goal of a budget surplus. (AtW's comment - that money will be taken out from City's coffers, money that help maintain stock bubble)
Just how much of a Tory is George Osborne? - Telegraph
How much of a Tory??
Correct answer - 100% Pure Tory Scum!
Gotto love it really - buy middle class vote with promise to increase high tax threshold to pathetic £50k and then totally rob them of other stuff they had more than making up for the "gift", which is yet to materialise!
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