Income tax for pensioners should not exceed £4,000 per year.

HUNTERF Did you pay tuition fees when you studied for your degree in – business studies, was it? I certainly didn't pay for any of my many years at university for which I am profoundly grateful. However, I have paid quite a lot of tax since.

My father paid my medical school fees!

Why did he have to, out of interest, Galen?

Income I suspect!
I didn't get a grant because of that either. I was a poor student, but, it taught me the value of money. Actually I did get £50 a year but that didn't even cover my textbooks and instruments.

Galen Living expenses, textbooks and instruments were all a cost, but I bet you didn't have to pay tuition fees in the days when you (and Frank and I) qualified in our respective disciplines.

Oh I see - I hadn't realised parents' income was taken into account.

Ana The student grant was to help with cost of living away from home and having to buy books, etc. It was means tested on parental income and living costs, so those students from large families or who had parents with large mortgages were given bigger grants than those who didn't. Charging students for tuition in England didn't happen until Tony Blair decided it was a good idea. The vote to introduce tuition fees was passed by the tiniest majority – and one that was dependent on MPs from Scotland and Northern Ireland whose constituents were not affected.

It was in ancient times when I qualified. You had to provide your own cauldron and stirring stick as well!

Galen Didn't you inherit the family cauldron? How disgraceful. We were a very blessed and fortunate generation in many ways though.

No! My father was still using it along with the leeches! (And that's true)

Tuition fees were set at a nominal figure in our days and that would include yours, Galen and everybody, whatever their income was entitled to what was known as "the minimum grant" which was £50 per annum plus fees paid. The ony exceptions would be non UK residents. Stubebt grants as others have said were to assist with living expenses = college/hall of residence etc.

In Edinburgh there is (was?) a long weekend in the middle of the academic year called Meal Monday. By tradition students from rural farms were allowed a Monday off so that they could go home to their parents over the weekend and pick up a sack of meal to replace the one they had brought with them at the start of the year. That, and a barrel of herring if funds would allow, was their basic food - provided by parents. (I have to add that this was before my day, but the holiday was still held, and I think still is.)

When I described this to a modern student, they got quite the wrong end of the stick and assumed that students were treated better in olden days, being given a sack of meal by the University. Chance would be a fine thing!

Yes I got the £50 as I said, but my father paid the fees. They were means tested and his income was too high!

Why should people who earn more pay more tax?
Forgive the use of cutnpaste here, but it makes it easier to answer this incomprehensible question:
(drum roll)
Because it is called Income Tax, Frank.
Or you could put it this way
"From each according to his means, to each according to his needs"

Yes, yes, yes!! I've said that too, on another, very, very similar thread. No response, of course.

I think actual tuition fees were not payable by UK residents , so I looked this up and (I quote) "tuition fees were first introduced across the entire United Kingdom in September 1998 as a means of funding tuition to undergraduate and postgraduate certificate students at universities, with students being required to pay up to £1,000 a year for tuition."
Of course in 2006 (?) this went up.

Sorry, but I remember father paying £93 a term fees. I was worried that if I had to retake my by then husband and myself would not be able to pay them if father refused!
It was very complicated as I married when still a student. The council said I was still dependant on father, so refused to up my grant or pay fees. The IR said I was married and therefore dependant on oh, so refused to allow me against fathers income.
Funnily enough if we had lived in Birmingham rather than Stafford shire my fees would have been paid.
This was in the 1960s

Somewhat selective in the responses, Araidne

Hi absent

I did not pay tuition fees but I finished my last exam on the Tuesday and started work on the Thursday.
I could not start on the Wednesday as I had to travel from Cardiff to London.
I started about 4 days before the end of the month and asked about joining the pension scheme within 2 hours of starting.
The manager said they normally approached a new joiner about 3 weeks after joining and if they wanted to enrol they usually did so at the beginning of the 3rd month.
I asked for my pension contributions from the first day.
I also paid my 2 daughters tuition fees and have given them a lot of help with financing their houses.
I was also a 40% taxpayer through out my working life and touching that scale now.

Frank

You must therefore have a higher than average income then, Frank , if you are "touching that scale now"

Out of the baby boomer (and before) generation the only UK students who ever paid tuition fees in the UK – not living expenses, hall of residence/flat rent, meal costs, buying books or other equipment, travel expenses – would have been mature students (at least 38–53 years old). Most of us were helped with living costs by our parents and with varying degrees (excuse the pun) of a means-tested grant.

Frank, You were lucky your employer offered a pension and that you were able to stay so long with one employer that you got a large pension

Many of us worked for employers who did not operate pension schemes or, for a variety of reasons, changed jobs a number of times. In the 1960s if you stayed less than five years in a job you could not keep your accrued pension. You payments into the scheme were returned to you, less tax when you left.

One of my employers operated a scheme like a modern personal pension. The pension payments I made were invested into a pension fund run by an insurance company. However nowadays, even if you stop paying into a fund like this the funds you have invested still grow. When I had this policy once you left the scheme the money was frozen and got no growth. When I left my employer the fund stood at several hundred pounds and would give me a pension of £10 a year.

When, 35 years later, I reached the age of 60. It was still only worth just over £200 and paid a pension of £10. I calculated that in current values I had paid over £2000 into the fund and as I capitalised the fund and withdrew all of it as a lump sum, after tax I received £179, in current value. I still shake with rage when I think of it.

That really is daylight robbery.

The small firm I worked for was acquired by a bigger firm and our pensions were frozen. In the firm I moved to I was encouraged to join the Equitable Life pension scheme. Bad move - I get about half the amount I should have got, though luckily I was only in it for about 5 years. A friend of mine who is self-employed had been with Equitable Life all her working life and has lost absolutely thousands.

FlicketyB

A substantial part of my income is my widows pension from my late wife's ex employers.
When she passed away I had the choice of a large lump sum or a pension from when she would have been 60.
I chose the pension and they sent me a letter saying they would contact me 6 months before it was payable and I had received nothing 5 months before.
I phoned the company and a woman said that a lump sum is paid out in the event of an employees death and the pension is extinguished.
I did scan the letter through to her and still heard nothing.
I then complained to her manager and got an offer about £5,000 per year short of what the pension should have been.
I then complained and found out they had left off some of her years of service, her AVC'S and her bonus sacrifices had been left off.
I was asked how I knew her start date and I said I had known her since she was 11 so I knew a lot about her.
They even said I should have not known about her bonus sacrifices and AVC'S but all the letters were in a drawer in the house and they came with me when I moved to Birmingham.
After about another month I phoned and a woman said that it was not an automatic right to receive a widows pension and even said I could not prove we would have been together still if she had lived.
I then wrote to the chairman threatening to take the company to the pensions ombudsman and he asked me to leave the matter with him for 2 weeks.
At the end of that time he came back agreeing to most of the pension and it was paid on time.
A bit more of the pension had to be looked at and it was paid 2 months late.

Frank

How extraordinary – yet one more person in the world trying to deprive you of money that is rightfully yours HUNTERF. I think it must be a global conspiracy.