Mums Finance

Isn’t it interesting that more and more of Gordon Brown’s earlier bad decisions are now coming back to haunt him? Unfortunately, in the case of some of them it’s been so long since taking them that the effects are often shouldered onto someone else.

Perhaps the very worst of these was the decision to tax income within pension schemes. That particular provision wasn’t even announced in the budget itself but tacked on as a seemingly minor point in the budget notes that came out the following day. Removing the taxfree status of pensions is estimated to have cost us all around £100 BILLION and all down to what was put over as a minor tax change.

Clearly something had to give with that £100 billion charge and what it is turning out to be is, as predicted in 1997, are the final salary schemes which needed that £100 billion to keep them running. Consequently, many of us will finish our retirement destitute when we should have been relatively well off.

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