Restoration of the age related allowance

A question about : Restoration of the age related allowance

E-Petition on the government's website has now reached nearly 32,000 signatures this morning.

This can be found under e-petition restoration of age related tax allowance.

Best answers:

• Why do you think it is worth restoring when the personal allowance is going to be up to that level within a very short period?
• There's a direct relationship between the above indexation increase in the basic PA and the freeze on the age related PAs. It was always going to happen from the outset of the Ј10k promise for the basic PA.
  The 'budget starter' by the tax simplification group that the Chancellor decided to pick up on simply advanced it.
• Hi
  Not quite got my head around this topic, perhaps fellow posters can help me with a fundemental question.:
  Why should the level of income you can enjoy before you start to pay tax be dictated by the number of candles on your birthday cake?
  Sure, it's not great that the age related allowance will be frozen for some and not be given to others but surely it should be based on your income and not your age. For example why should Paul McCartney (for example) start to pay tax later than a single mother in her twenties struggling to bring up a child on her own and hold down a job?
  It was never guaranteed that the age related allowance would all be available and it just so happens that this time around pensioners are the group being hit.
  It was terrible politics announcing this at the same time as the 50p tax rate reduction, but that doesn't necesserily make the decision wrong.
  The Canny Saver
• Funny isn't it, that no mention was made before the election. if it had there would be no Con/Dem government.
• Predictably, there has been a lot of nonsense and hysteria about this. The media immediately came up with the appellation 'granny tax' which sparked off a huge amount of over-reaction and ill-informed comment.
  The poorest of retired people will not be affected because, at the lowest income level, they don't pay tax anyway. As someone wrote on one thread on this site not too long ago, with pension credit, housing benefit, council tax benefit, you name it, if you're retired with no mortgage to pay it is possible to live quite nicely. People who get tax allowances now - people like myself and DH - will still continue to get them, only they will not increase annually. Well, I can live with that. The only people who are really going to be affected are those who will be retiring in the next year or two, and those who follow on. The poorest people in our society, according to AgeUK figures, are older single women living alone. But they're mostly on benefits!
  Contrast this scenario with my eldest GD. She works full-time as a youth worker. Local authority employee. She lives in a council flat so gets single-person discount for council tax - however, her council tax is almost as much as we pay for a 'C' band bungalow. Month after month there is 'too much month left' at the end of the money, and I end up helping her out. I'd really love to see her tax bill reduced. She does all she can, pays into the LGPS, budgets very closely for herself and her dog (she needs him because it's a rough area). There are countless other people in the younger generations who are struggling.
  As regards not voting Con/Lib/Lab, I'm a member of a newish political party, the English Democrats. Until we get more members and a bigger vote, we can't even start to formulate detailed policies. However, this is what we say: Our pensioners should be a priority. And about tax: We would ensure that taxes are kept as low as possible. Rather than funding huge foreign aid budgets we would lower taxes. And The EU costs us Ј65 bn a year..we'd be better off out of the EU, trading with who we wish, making our own laws and taxes.
• Well I won't be signing, it's about time Pensioners stated contributing to the mess we've all found ourselves in. Remember - we're all in it together.
  MT - Retired.
• So the argument is that since we all get a pension, those of us that save should also have a higher allowance to act as some form of differentiation?
  If my colleagues and I all get paid the same, why don't those of us who save more get a higher allowance?
  Why do you think those earning Ј150K should pay proportionately more tax than those who don't?