Income tax for pensioners should not exceed £4,000 per year.

Frank it was your comment re the higher rate of personal allowance - from tax year 2013/14 , no higher rate personal allowance for people born after 5 April 1948 and it has been frozen for everyone else so will gradually disappear. Quite right too!

A piggy bank?

bluebell

You are trying to run up my age.
I will be 64 on the last day of March.
I am not expecting much of a birthday as I am expecting my 4th grandchild on the 30th.
Never mind. I might be out on the 31st buying my new grandchild something for my birthday for him / her.

Frank

Frank - will you be 65 after 5 April 2013?

HUNTERF It is funny – funny peculiar, not funny ha ha. Btw I don't think Galen was making a serious comment when she suggested you were p"overty ridden". I am not so sure that you weren't being serious when you suggested a Gransnet collection for you.

gracesmum

I don't qualify for higher rate personal allowance yet.

Frank

phoenix

Galen said in his thread at 22.02:20 that I am poverty ridden.
If that is the case probably the Gransneters should hold a collection for me.
I am not getting my state pension yet.

Frank

Then of course there are those with no pension at all in place.

Sounds like financially you are doing pretty well Frank, at least 3 pensions, probably reduced council tax for single occupancy, winter fuel allowance, free prescriptions, ditto eye tests, dentistry available at NHS rates.

Apart from the private pensions, I wonder how the other things would be funded if you and every other pensioner were only paying a maximum of £4,000 a year?

Ana

If they read the letters I had sent them in the past along with the old pension rules they would realise why I get more.

Frank

What me? ironic?

Or were you being ironic Galen?

I think I might be part of quite a large group of poverty stricken pensioners as I am certainly not paying 40% tax on mine! (Wishful thinking!) But on the bright side I now qualify for the higher personal allowance having just hit the big 6 5 . Big deal.

An hour's telephone conversation, Frank? Someone seems to be talking an awful lot more than they need to do to point out what seems to be an administrative error. Put it in writing and refer them to your correspondence in future. In any case, £500 an hour is obviously ludicrous - unless of course you are really 'Mr Loophole'....

I'm surprised you're only just touching the 40% Frank. Does this mean yore not actually paying it?
I'm sure most of us are paying 40% on some of our pensions.
If you aren't, you must indeed be poverty ridden!

I think they should give me £500 for this hours telephone conversation.

Frank

Now why does that not surprise me?

Hi absent

A lot of people think it is funny that I get in to these disputes all the time but it is not funny when you are the one it happens to.
You have just reminded me. I am due for a boring 1 hour phone call from my pension scheme which I get every year asking me why I get about £700 more per annum than I should.
The answer is the old pension rules applied to people who joined the company from the 1st August and I joined about 4 days before the rules changed.
Up until now a new person takes over the job every year and the old person forgets to tell the new person Frank is subject to different rules.

Frank

How extraordinary – yet one more person in the world trying to deprive you of money that is rightfully yours HUNTERF. I think it must be a global conspiracy.

FlicketyB

A substantial part of my income is my widows pension from my late wife's ex employers.
When she passed away I had the choice of a large lump sum or a pension from when she would have been 60.
I chose the pension and they sent me a letter saying they would contact me 6 months before it was payable and I had received nothing 5 months before.
I phoned the company and a woman said that a lump sum is paid out in the event of an employees death and the pension is extinguished.
I did scan the letter through to her and still heard nothing.
I then complained to her manager and got an offer about £5,000 per year short of what the pension should have been.
I then complained and found out they had left off some of her years of service, her AVC'S and her bonus sacrifices had been left off.
I was asked how I knew her start date and I said I had known her since she was 11 so I knew a lot about her.
They even said I should have not known about her bonus sacrifices and AVC'S but all the letters were in a drawer in the house and they came with me when I moved to Birmingham.
After about another month I phoned and a woman said that it was not an automatic right to receive a widows pension and even said I could not prove we would have been together still if she had lived.
I then wrote to the chairman threatening to take the company to the pensions ombudsman and he asked me to leave the matter with him for 2 weeks.
At the end of that time he came back agreeing to most of the pension and it was paid on time.
A bit more of the pension had to be looked at and it was paid 2 months late.

Frank

That really is daylight robbery.

The small firm I worked for was acquired by a bigger firm and our pensions were frozen. In the firm I moved to I was encouraged to join the Equitable Life pension scheme. Bad move - I get about half the amount I should have got, though luckily I was only in it for about 5 years. A friend of mine who is self-employed had been with Equitable Life all her working life and has lost absolutely thousands.

Frank, You were lucky your employer offered a pension and that you were able to stay so long with one employer that you got a large pension

Many of us worked for employers who did not operate pension schemes or, for a variety of reasons, changed jobs a number of times. In the 1960s if you stayed less than five years in a job you could not keep your accrued pension. You payments into the scheme were returned to you, less tax when you left.

One of my employers operated a scheme like a modern personal pension. The pension payments I made were invested into a pension fund run by an insurance company. However nowadays, even if you stop paying into a fund like this the funds you have invested still grow. When I had this policy once you left the scheme the money was frozen and got no growth. When I left my employer the fund stood at several hundred pounds and would give me a pension of £10 a year.

When, 35 years later, I reached the age of 60. It was still only worth just over £200 and paid a pension of £10. I calculated that in current values I had paid over £2000 into the fund and as I capitalised the fund and withdrew all of it as a lump sum, after tax I received £179, in current value. I still shake with rage when I think of it.

Out of the baby boomer (and before) generation the only UK students who ever paid tuition fees in the UK – not living expenses, hall of residence/flat rent, meal costs, buying books or other equipment, travel expenses – would have been mature students (at least 38–53 years old). Most of us were helped with living costs by our parents and with varying degrees (excuse the pun) of a means-tested grant.

You must therefore have a higher than average income then, Frank , if you are "touching that scale now"

Hi absent

I did not pay tuition fees but I finished my last exam on the Tuesday and started work on the Thursday.
I could not start on the Wednesday as I had to travel from Cardiff to London.
I started about 4 days before the end of the month and asked about joining the pension scheme within 2 hours of starting.
The manager said they normally approached a new joiner about 3 weeks after joining and if they wanted to enrol they usually did so at the beginning of the 3rd month.
I asked for my pension contributions from the first day.
I also paid my 2 daughters tuition fees and have given them a lot of help with financing their houses.
I was also a 40% taxpayer through out my working life and touching that scale now.

Frank

Somewhat selective in the responses, Araidne