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Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees
I suppose one point of view is that people who are receiving state pension have paid tax and NI throughout their working lives ?
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That argument would be false - I have no idea how big the cohort is but there are pensioners who have paid little or no tax and had their NI credits paid for them due to extensive unemployment.
At the other end of the scale there are those who were so highly paid in their working life that they have amassed vast pension funds for retirement. And earnings diverted into pension were diverted from their payslips pre-tax. So those pension pots are full of untaxed income.
I think it’s fair to say the situation isn’t black and white. It is certainly ambiguous enough that it wouldn’t be sensible to give pensioners a blanket exemption from paying tax, although no tax on the state pension alone would seem to be a sensible approach (as the state pension, despite all the right wing squealing, is not that large by European standards).
(EDIT)
There is an interesting table here that shows the monthly pension of European countries compared with the cost of living in those countries. It then calculates how far above or below the break-even point each national pension is. tl;dr: we pay above break even but not by much.
https://www.almondfinancial.co.uk/pe...est-of-europe/