Pensions - Articles - Number of taxpaying pensioners continues to soar

 LCP has recently published analysis on the issue of pensioners and tax which found that just under 2.5m pensioners currently receive state pensions which – on their own – are in excess of the personal tax allowance. The large majority of these are older pensioners on the ‘old’ state pension system, who combine a basic pension with a significant earnings-related pension under the SERPS scheme.

 Commenting, Steve Webb, partner at LCP said: “These new figures from HMRC are very timely and help to inform the debate about pensioners and tax. They show that a combination of frozen tax thresholds and significant increases in the state pension means the number of pensioners paying tax has continued to soar. But this is a continuation of a long-term trend which has seen the number of over 65s paying tax rise by around 4 million since 2010/11. For a pensioner in Britain, being an income taxpayer is now the norm rather than the exception”.