Paying for care

[ahinton]

I was referring to public service pensions (NHS, civil servants, local government, teachers, and now the Royal Mail) which demand high contributions from their employees. These are state pension schemes that the New Robert Maxwells sees fit to raid and tell massive fibs about the state of the contribution vs. payout figures, even when using their own criteria. Anyone else would be sent to prison for fraud.

OK, Eine A; very many thanks for your explanation of this - I'd not appreciated what it was that you were writing about but I do now.

[MrGongGong]

What I don't understand is that
If you are living alone and need to go into care to be looked after
why it is thought of as a great injustice that you might need to sell the house that you no longer live in and use the money to pay for what you need ?

There ARE great injustices in the current system but surely this isn't one of them ?

Is passing on your wealth to your children somehow a basic right ?
And what is wrong with paying tax on money you receive but don't do anything to earn ?

[ahinton]

What I don't understand is that
If you are living alone and need to go into care to be looked after
why it is thought of as a great injustice that you might need to sell the house that you no longer live in and use the money to pay for what you need ?

It's a reasonable point in principle as far as it goes, but it does entail the vulnerable and needy party having to part company with what his/her intentions would otherwise have been in terms of passing value on to those to whom he/she might choose to do so.

There ARE great injustices in the current system but surely this isn't one of them ?

It's not one of the worst by any means, but it's not an example of justice either.

Is passing on your wealth to your children somehow a basic right ?

Don'/t ask the French that question! It doesn't even have to be your children anyway; it's a matter of whether you can or cannot do with what you have what you'd like to do with it, such as helping to fund an orchestra or someone's education or whatever else.

And what is wrong with paying tax on money you receive but don't do anything to earn ?

What IS wrong, to my mind, about IHT is the principle under which people end up paying tax on funds that have already been taxes during the person's lifetime, because this is the one area where the principles of "double taxation relief" don't even get a look in as they do elsewhere - how "equitable" is that?...