The problem is that National Insurance has become, over the years, just another form of income tax. Adding complication to the system, ensuring that very few understand what they’re paying and why, which is all the type of smoke and mirrors stuff governments love. If we went back to the original concept of National Insurance as actual insurance, it would all make much more sense. And it was actually Winston Churchill’s idea. He ‘coined the phrase ‘from the Cradle to the Grave’ in 1943 to describe the need for some form of social insurance to give security to every class of citizen in the state’. Who knew?
“HMRC scraps plans to tax pensions after death”
A couple of other Statement Highlights (in my world, anyway). A welcome ‘nothing happened’ on the treatment of pensions on death. They were never going to be liable to IHT (too complicated with trusts and trust law) but there was talk of making them income-taxable on the recipients at whatever age you die.
