THE LAST WORD by TONY HAZELL: An immoral tax attack
What are these people thinking? It is still the case that the man will often have built the bigger pension and it will usually be his wife who inherits. Are these Treasury mandarins and Government ministers deliberately trying to force women into poverty?
My proposal is that there is a spousal exemption so husbands and wives can inherit the whole of each other’s pension fund without this immoral tax charge. Once the second partner dies, then the remaining fund could be taxed at a slightly higher rate if necessary.
A spousal exemption would recognise that even today men have greater opportunities to build bigger pensions than women. And, crucially, it would help to prevent
women, who slog to raise children, work and care for parents, from being cast into poverty in their old age.
Wherever there is easy money to be made, some form of pond life will emerge to fleece unsuspecting consumers. The latest example is holiday villa scams infiltrating