Gordon Brown first introduced his stealth tax abolishing advanced corporation tax credits on pensions in his 1997 budget. Terry Arthur, a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, estimated that this would reduce the value of UK pension schemes by more than a £100 billion in a paper written for the group. A joint investigation by The Independent on Sunday and BDO Stoy Hayward, the specialist accountancy and business advisory group, has revealed that Mr Brown’s 1997 decision to tax dividends paid into pension funds will have far greater consequences than previously thought. The £100,000 figure represents a reduction of up to 13 per cent in the value of the pension pot a typical employee who pays into a defined contribution scheme could expect to save over the course of their working life.
Furthermore, the amount of companies contributing to final salary schemes have halved under the labour government. On top of this, they decided not to pass an amendment which would have given 8 million women with a partial pension entitlement the chance to make up the shortfall in their National Insurance contributions by making lump sum payments into their national insurance contributions. In fact, pressure is growing for Gordon Brown to step down as James Purnell has become the third cabinet minister to resign according to BBC news, June 5th. In fact, according to their ICM survey, only 29% of the 1,005 adults surveyed thought that Gordon Brown was in touch with ordinary people. Continue reading ‘Gordon Brown Reduces the Value of UK Pensions’ »