What is the cost of means testing winter fuel allowance?

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Rachel Reeves posted this on Twitter this lunchtime:

This means 70% of all pensioners are going to have the winter fuel allowance restored after not having it for one year.

30% will miss out.

How is she going to find out who they are?

Given the complexity of many taxpayers' affairs, there is no way she can do this from online tax filing, so what will the cost of excluding those not qualifying be?

My suggestion is that it will be much more than the cost of paying the allowance to 100% of pensioners.

And if a form is required, millions who deserve the payment will lose out.

Labour really is determined to get everything wrong.


Update:

I now gather that excess payments to those with total income above £35,000 will be collected via tax returns.

This creates a totally new tax threshold.

It might also require millions more pensioners to complete tax returns.

In turn, it will create vast amounts of extra work for HMRC and considerable need for additional correspondence. 

And, of course, all those who get this wrong could be fined.

If you wanted to create mayhem for a £200 allowance for 3.9 million people, you could not do it more effectively than this.

What a mess. 


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