Widow Colette, aged 75, is entitled to a proportion of her late husband’s state pension as well as her own, and found for the first time this year that the combined total took her over the tax threshold by about £1000, which is now being taxed. Colette’s small NHS pension, of £37 a month, earned as a GP Practice Nurse, is also being taxed. After Colette lost her winter fuel payment last winter, this was a double whammy on her quality of life in retirement. 

Silver Voices, the UK-wide campaign organisation for the over 60s, is campaigning for Colette, and countless other pensioners, and we need your support to persuade the Chancellor to take urgent action to prevent the basic state pension from being taxed as early as next year. 

Because of the frozen tax personal allowances, the top of the new state pension will probably breach the current personal allowance of £12570 in  2027. The Chancellor in her 2025 Budget has made the situation much worse by extending the freeze for three extra years until April 2031 by which time the vast majority of older people will be paying some tax on their pensions.

This would lead to the ludicrous situation of the state pension safety net, which has already been paid for through national insurance and tax, being taxed again. Many more pensioners across the country would be plunged into poverty as a result of political choice. 

The frozen tax threshold has already led to hundreds of thousands of older people with small private pensions being brought into the tax system for the first time. And for many pensioners like Colette, her state pension entitlements are already being taxed.

If the basic state pension starts being taxed it undermines the whole principle of a safety net in retirement to ensure that the basic necessities in life can be afforded. And if Triple Lock increases each year are also taxed then that safeguard, to protect against sudden increases in the cost of living, is also undermined. 

Will you stand up to protect older people and call on the Chancellor to increase the tax threshold for state pensioners by at least £1000 and commit to increasing the tax threshold in line with the Triple Lock increases in future years?

STOP THIS RETIREMENT TAX!