Mintball wrote:
Dally wrote:
... When you say pensions holidays who are you blaming?
Who allowed pensions holidays?
Pension funds had their heyday in the days of high taxes, both corporation tax and income tax (83% income tax on earnings of over 20,000, CT at 52% etc). It was more efficient for employers and employees to reward via pension contributions, rather than extra salary. Companies got 52% tax relief on contributions, employees did have an immediate and high tax liability. That period corresponded with high stock market growth and the back-end of the era of big numbers in employments compared with pensioners, so the garden was rosy.
Then the Revenue, under the Tories, saw companies using over-funded pension funds for tax abuse and paying off the higher paid in their 50s to replace them with cheaper, younger people. So they sought to tax surpluses. Companies then started to take holidays as the stock market was booming and creating apparent surpluses. The Pensions Act that came in after Maxwell's abuse exaggerated the problem. Then Brown went for the stealth tax option too. It was then realised that actuarial factors were inaccurate and people were living longer, costs of schemes were increased due to legislation, employee numbers were falling and liabilities to present and future pensioners rising and stockmarkets were not going anywhere, so companies were getting out at an increasing rate. Then FRS 17 (an accounting standard) came in which was the final straw for many companies.
In short, with the significant exceptions of actuarial cock-ups and accounting standard setters, most of the boom and bust in defined benefit pension provision has been driven by politicians and their inability to think through (or care about) the longer term results of their actions.
