As PM Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves crank up their pensioner tax raids they’re being given intellectual cover by a shadowy force with a single objective: to make the elderly pay more.
An army of think tanks are urging PM Keir Starmer to tax pensioners harder (Image: Getty)
A secret army of left-wing think tanks are urging Labour to take ever more extreme tax measures. They’re advocating intergenerational warfare by targeting older people with a bit of wealth to their name.
They claimed an early victory when Reeves axed the Winter Fuel Payment but they’re not going to stop there. Now they’re on full war footing.
One of them is The Fabian Society, the oldest UK tank founded in 1884, whose long-term goal is to establish a democratic socialist state in Great Britain.
Last month, it called for Reeves to hike three taxes in her autumn Budget on October 30, including a £10billion tax raid on our pensions.
The Fabians want to slash the most popular pension benefit of all, the 25% tax-free cash lump sum. They’re calling on Reeves to cut the maximum amount from £268,275 to £100,000.
Millions build their retirement plans around tax-free cash and this would throw them into disarray.
While £100,000 seems a lot, once that cap is set it will never increase, dragging more middle income pensioners into the net every year.
And of course it won’t affect gold-plated public sector pensions. But then, none of Labour’s tax raids will.
The Fabian Society also wants Reeves to scrap higher rate tax relief on pension contributions, and slap inheritance tax on unused pensions for good measure.
The Fabians are not acting alone. The Resolution Foundation has similar objectives.
In June, it recommended capping the maximum amount people can hold in tax-free Isas at £100,000, again, hitting older savers.
It has also condemned the state pension triple lock for favouring the older generation over the young. And questioned why pensioners don’t have to pay national insurance on earnings.
In a tweet on Wednesday it called for Reeves to hike capital gains tax, claiming it’s “unjustifiably low”. Naturally, it wants to hike inheritance tax, too.
Resolution Foundation boss Torsten Bell once advised former Labour leader Ed Miliband and was parachuted into a safe Labour seat during the election.
That’s a sign of how influential the think tank is.
There are plenty more. Richard Murphy at Funding the Future has lots of thoughts, but I’m not convinced Express readers will like them.
Tax Justice is also on the march, “fighting for fairer taxes that take more from the very rich”.
The Institute for Public Policy Research sounds authoritative but it’s just another social warrior fighting the war on wealth
None of these think tanks have a sensible suggestion for making the UK economy grow. They just want to tax, tax, tax, as if that will somehow do the job.
Labour is being given further cover by the unions, of course, who want Labour to introduce a wealth tax.
The TUC says it wants to “kickstart a conversation” about tax but that hardly seems necessary. These days the left talks about little else.
Former HMRC boss Sir Edward Troup is a one-man think tank. Reeves recently appointed him as a tax advisor, and he was thrilled when she axed the Winter Fuel Payment.
The problem with private armies is that they’re impossible to control, as Starmer and Reeves will discover to their cost.
The Winter Fuel Payment fiasco shows what happens if Labour caves in to these tax warmongers.
The think tanks are rolling in. Pensioners had better take cover. Starmer and Reeves need to tread carefully, too. This is a political minefield for them.
