Young? Feeling hard done by? You are not alone. Nor are you unsupported. The Resolution Foundation is on your side. The think tank's Intergenerational Commission reckons it's time to tax the old and bribe the young. If they get their way, over-65s who work will pay national insurance (NI) in the same way as under-65s; the tax-free lump sum you can take when you draw your pension will fall to £42,000 (rather than 25% of the total); the triple lock on the state pension will become a double lock; inheritance tax (IHT) will be replaced with a "lifetime receipts" or gift tax on the recipient of cash (see my blogs); and pension tax relief will be a flat 28% (from today's maximum of 45%). They'd also like to boost the pension chances of the young by lowering the salary level at which auto-enrolment kicks in, and to make employers of the self-employed contribute to pensions for them.
Some of this is perfectly reasonable. A healthy working 67-year old shouldn't pay less tax than a 25-year-old, particularly when the link between NI and the state pension is increasingly tenuous. The fact that 25% of any pension pot can be withdrawn totally tax free be it worth £10m (for those who got rich before the amount you could accrue in a pension was slashed to just over £1m) or £50,000 probably isn't sustainable. And IHT is a badly managed tax crying out for reform.
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