{"id":26198,"date":"2014-09-26T11:23:50","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T10:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=26198"},"modified":"2014-09-26T11:23:50","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T10:23:50","slug":"pension-tax-relief-costs-50-billion-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/09\/26\/pension-tax-relief-costs-50-billion-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Pension tax relief costs \u00c2\u00a350 billion a  year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The cost of subsidising UK pension tax relief has reached \u00a350 billion a year. The following table, issued earlier this year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/358117\/Sept_14_Pensions_publication.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">has been re-issued by the government today<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-26-at-11.11.30.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-26199\" src=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-26-at-11.11.30.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-09-26 at 11.11.30\" width=\"600\" height=\"335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-26-at-11.11.30.png 669w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-26-at-11.11.30-300x167.png 300w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-26-at-11.11.30-536x300.png 536w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-26-at-11.11.30-200x111.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The relevant figures are \u00a334.8 billion tax and \u00a315.2 billion NI from right hand column.<\/p>\n<p>It's long been my suggestion that this relief should be abolished at higher rates. The new stats provide no estimate that I can see of what this cost is (but if anyone else has found it, please point it out).<\/p>\n<p>What I have also argued is that a condition of this relief is that 25% of all contributions - likely to easily exceed \u00a380 billion pa - should be invested in job creation programmes. It is impossible to specify that these must be in the UK but the availability of specific infrastructure bonds would make this incredibly easy to link to investment in UK sustainable growth.\u00a0\u00a320 billion a year would transform that.<\/p>\n<p>So why is no one adopting the idea? Is it another case of cowardly politics where it is too risky to demand that pension funds be used for social good rather then funding speculative bubbles?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cost of subsidising UK pension tax relief has reached \u00a350 billion a year. The following table, issued earlier this year, has been re-issued by<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/09\/26\/pension-tax-relief-costs-50-billion-a-year\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pensions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}