Sunak’s claim about
Labour’s tax policy has been widely debunked, and exposed for the silliness
which it is. Whether the next government will actually increase taxes or cut services is
an open question, however – doing neither whilst adhering to a stupid and unnecessary
fiscal rule of their own invention is a logical impossibility, but exactly the
same can be said about the Tories. His claim that he will protect pensioners
from ever paying income tax on their state pension, however, enters a new world
of unreality.
It is a fact that
the default position, as of today, is that an increasing number of pensioners
are going to end up starting to pay income tax on part of their state pension.
That is the result – the inevitable result – of both freezing tax allowances
and increasing the pension. The resulting effective increase in income tax
doesn’t only affect pensioners, it’s just more obvious because the state
pension has long been set at a level below the threshold for income tax. Sunak’s
promise to increase the tax threshold, for pensioners only, to ensure that it always
stays higher than the level of state pension will certainly do what he says –
i.e. ensure that no-one pays tax on their state pension.
But he is
effectively arguing that the best way to protect pensioners from the effects of
Tory policies is to vote Tory. “Vote for me to protect you from me” is a novel – probably unique –
election gambit.
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