George Osborne has received support from an unexpected source: the Labour leaning think tank, the IPPR.
In an article entitled “Why Osborne’s ‘granny tax’ makes sense“, Senior Research Fellow at the IPPR, Kayte Lawton says:
It is right for older people to contribute to deficit reduction…
Older people have been relatively protected from the spending cuts imposed by the coalition. The young have taken the brunt of the pain… Asking older people to contribute to tackling the deficit and shoring up the country’s tax base in the long-term is not unreasonable…
Osborne’s pleas of simplification have not played well, but he is right that age-related allowances add huge complexity to the tax system. This is important because it means that many pensioners do not even claim the higher allowance they are entitled to.
* George Kendall is chair of the Social Democrat Group, which is being formed to celebrate and develop our social democrat heritage, and to reach out to social democrats beyond the party. He writes in a personal capacity.