Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 22
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday proposed tax cuts for millions of pensioners in his latest campaign pledge, highlighting the importance of older voters in the upcoming July election.
Sunak’s Conservative Party said it would introduce a new age-related allowance and deliver a tax cut of around 100 pounds ($128) for each of 8 million pensioners in 2025, rising to almost 300 pounds a year by the end of the next parliament.
“This bold action demonstrates we are on the side of pensioners. The alternative is Labour dragging everyone in receipt of the full state pension into income tax for the first time in history,” Sunak, who last week called a general election for July 4, said in the statement.
The number of pensioners in Britain rose by 140,000 to 12.6 million in the year to February 2023. Close to 50 million Britons will be eligible to vote in the election, which opinion polls predict is likely to end 14 years of Conservative rule in the country.
The Conservative Party said the proposal comes alongside its commitment to the so-called triple lock, which guarantees increases to publicly funded pensions by the level of earnings, inflation or 2.5%, whichever is highest.
The new proposal, which the party termed “triple lock plus,” will cost 2.4 billion pounds a year by 2029/30 and be funded through the government’s previously announced plan to raise an extra 6 billion pounds a year by clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion, the party said.
Source: Reuters
