Possibility of claiming 60% of husband's state pension rights

I'm just realising that I've completely misunderstood the point of the OP. I thought she meant that when one spouse dies the other can claim his/her pension.

It became that long ago. As do all threads where people decide to be judgemental and set themselves on a pedestal Germanshepherdsmum.

Dinahmo, yes I do object to anyone asking if they can pay a tradesperson in cash in order to escape VAT, who thereby encourage and collude in tax evasion, and those tradespeople (and others) who evade tax. Why do you ask? Why would I not object? Something I have been offered but never done. Tax avoidance, however, sometimes via offshore companies, is not illegal but it’s not something I approve of or have ever indulged in.

I remember Anne Mallalieu very well and her attempt to claim the purchase of black clothing as an expense related solely to her work. I believe that was a genuine test case though (and before you say it, no we don’t all stick together). If you knew her you’d know she didn’t wear barrister’s black clothing socially. Like her I was self employed for many years but you won’t be surprised to hear that I didn’t bend the rules. In my experience HMRC look at such claims very closely.

Pippa, my comments have been solely about individuals, not family units. Individuals, not family units, are taxable.

I shall now follow Doodledog’s example and leave this thread, which has become unpleasant and pointless.

Well I thought N.I. contributions were counted in respect to how much Pension you were paid,
Bet I'm not the only one to think that.
Reminds me how I thought I would get a pension at 60,there again I live
In France so my own fault

So all the people who are not "earning" are in family units that are too poor to pay tax, or even a great deal of tax and/or work the system.

I should have typed "wholly, necessarily and exclusively"

Germanshepherdsmum

Many people play the system - do you resent the following:

Each and everyone of us who asks a tradesperson whether we can pay them in cash (thereby avoiding VAT)

Those tradespersons who don't declare all their cash income (thereby avoiding paying income tax)

Those who are or were self employed who claim for a wide range of expenses, some of which may not have been "wholly and necessarily" for their work. Since you were a lawyer I'd point you in the direction of Ann Mallalieu v HMRC (you may be too young to remember it)

Finally, those who avoid paying income tax by using off shore companies

PZ I’m sure none of us needs a lecture about NI and how the pot is made up and distributed, nor to be told that our state pensions are not (by and large) dependent on how much we have paid into the system. But I have already asked you - if everyone who had a choice of working or staying at home decided on the latter, which must make for a somewhat less stressful lifestyle, where would the money for pensions and other benefits and health care come from? I will answer that for you as you seem unwilling to do so - those who undertook the much derided paid work, and their employers, would be required to pay more into the pot. I really cannot understand your unwillingness to acknowledge that some of us resent what we have paid benefitting those who could have made payments themselves but made a deliberate choice not to. I don’t ask you to share that view but I believe anyone who has worked hard both inside and outside the home for the majority of their life will understand it.

I cannot tell you how little interest I have in your life when it comes to this subject Doodledog. You are the one who made it personal. As far as I was concerned this was about pensions, not about who worked and who didn't. I was just trying to sympathise as you seemed put out.

I'm out.

I cannot tell you how little interest I have in your life when it comes to this subject Doodledog. You are the one who made it personal. As far as I was concerned this was about pensions, not about who worked and who didn't. I was just trying to sympathise as you seemed put out.

I repeat.

You do not get awarded a pension on the basis that you worked.

You get it because you have been a citizen for the required number of years. NI is how citizenship is recorded. It could be another way but it isn't.

You have not paid for your pension. You have merely paid another general tax.

The government want paying out the pension to be as cheap to run as possible.

They want to ensure everyone pensioner has enough to live on.

This is why they began to add benefits into the basic pension so everyone gets them.

Their aim is to pay everyone the same amount in pension. This is what a pension based on citizenship does.

This is not a pension you have paid an amount into, varying from person to person, and paying out based on what is paid in. That seems to be how you see it but again, who knows.

NI is two things. A record of citizenship and a tax.

This is what has happened and is in place, not a view of what should happen may/may not be different. It is not political. It is fact.

Sorry - the thread moved on when I was typing. That was to Pippa in response to the post where she accused my of denigrating my friend and saying she is less of a citizen than I am.

I didn't say that I didn't stay at home when I wanted to?.

Again, you are extrapolating your world view from what I am saying, and are attributing your prejudices to me.

My friend could just as easily have been called 'Person A', but that sort of post quickly gets complicated. I am not denigrating my friend, Person A or their choices - I am questioning their right to an automatic pension. As I have said more than once.

I don't think that I am better than her. Not at all. That is a rather strange thing to say - how can one person be 'better than' another? Again, indicative of your world view, but definitely not mine.

Not that it is remotely relevant to this discussion, but I didn't 'have to' work. I could have stayed at home, but chose not to. The difference between my choice and my friend's (or Person A's) is that I didn't expect anyone else to subsidise my choice.

I object to your unfounded and entirely baseless assertion that I think that my friend is 'less of a citizen'. I am not saying that - in fact I am expressly denying it. Saying that someone is not (in my opinion on a discussion thread) entitled to something is not denigrating them, saying they are less of a citizen or shifting them from being a friend to a "friend". My discussing her in an entirely anonymous way on a discussion board is not shocking - it is not as though I'm standing at the garden fence hitching my bosom as I gossip about her to the neighbours. FWIW, we have discussed this sort of thing between us more than once. She is fully aware that she has played the system (her words) and says that this is why they pay their accountant. She is within the law and some people, like you, can argue that she is within her moral rights too. I don't agree, but so what?

This is a discussion about what boils down to politics (as are most discussions in the end). I am not prepared to continue if you persist in making it personal and telling me that I think things that I have persistently said I do not.

I don't know how to say this more clearly. You do not get a pension because you work although it may be a contributing factor to proving you were a citizen at the time.

That is why the government had added various other ways to show you were a citizen. There is a list on this page about the circumstances under which you can get credits There are also circumstances under which you can buy them for yourself.

The government does not want you to have gaps in your citizenship. It wants it to be as simple as possible. It just doesn't want to tell you that.

Making judgements about other peoples lives is pointless, unkind and just disparaging gossip. No one knows the ins and outs of another person or family's life, however much we think we do.

If people claim the amounts that they should have had as described in the OP, I am quite sure the government will find a way of taking back any benefits they have received back. No one is taking anyone else's money.

I think that to try to separate women like Doodledog's friend would be wrong. She obviously found fulfillment through being a stay a home mum whereas many others preferred to work. I mentioned in an earlier thread my mum and the problems she had when she wanted to get back to work. It was because she was bored at home once we had all started school.

Most of my friends had high powered jobs and took the minimum maternity leave. They are the ones who had problems when it came to retirement. They are also the ones who contributed for at least 40 years because they continued working after 60. None of them have complained about those who chose not to work.

Not everyone who contributed into the system has benefited in every way. My father died when he was 55 so no state pension for him. My mother died when she was 65 so state pension or widow's benefit for 10 years. Some of you will have parents who live into their nineties and could therefore be receiving the state pension for 30 to 40 years. No one is complaining about that.

I would suggest that we've all benefited in some way or other from the state, whether it's pensions or some other way. I think that some of the comments above illustrate the Tories policies of divide and rule.

My mil never worked a day after she married. She lived till 95 and received a good pension which was topped up from fil pension he’d worked till 59 died at that age. So he ne er even saw his pension.

Doodledog

You are being snide and there really is no need.

My opinion is different from yours, and in a reasonable discussion that is fine.

I repeat - I am not denigrating my friend. I am asking a simple question about why she should be entitled to a state pension paid for by others - particularly others who may have wanted to stay at home but had no choice in the matter for financial reasons. That is not denigrating anyone.

As I have said, there is no great God work in my world - you are falsely attributing that idea to me, too.

Your opinion is different not to mine; it is different to the facts. If I was your friend I would be shocked to know this is how you talk about me. You are denigrating her choice and thereby denigrating her.

I am sorry if you felt you could not stay at home when you wanted to. Your friend decided she could and would. It may have been for the same level of high principle you have about working or out of necessity. You appear to want her to be punished for the choice she made by taking away some of the rights citizenship gives us.

You know this is nothing to do with NI payments. These payments in no way pay for the NHS, unemployment benefits, sickness and disability allowances, and the state pension. NI is a tax by any other name. NI goes into the "tax pot" at the time it is paid and goes out like any other tax at that time. NI is not accumulated for our needs or even just our pension* There would not be enough. It is a simple tool so governments can say they haven't raised taxes when they have by raising NI and acts as a tool, along with other markers, to check we have been citizens of this country for the required time.

You are, not perhaps deliberately, but you are saying you are better than your friend because you worked; she is less of a citizen. The system, which is always set up to get what government wants, does not agree with you.

*I know Maisie.

PZ, Doodledog has not denigrated her friend (not “friend” with all those quote marks imply), she merely used her as an example of women who choose not to work because they can afford not to do so.

Why do you persist in denigrating those who have undertaken ‘the grand God “paid work”’? Many of us have had little or no choice in the matter. Many could have stayed at home but chose to have a career. Many have been unable to undertake paid work through force of circumstance. If everyone who could do paid work decided to stay at home, what levels of benefits and health care could be afforded for those who cannot work?

You asked me at the very outset if I was looking for a fight. I repeat that I am not and never have been, but there’s always someone on a thread with any possibility of controversy who will be aggressive, forcing others to defend themselves and preventing debate on the subject matter.

You are being snide and there really is no need.

My opinion is different from yours, and in a reasonable discussion that is fine.

I repeat - I am not denigrating my friend. I am asking a simple question about why she should be entitled to a state pension paid for by others - particularly others who may have wanted to stay at home but had no choice in the matter for financial reasons. That is not denigrating anyone.

As I have said, there is no great God work in my world - you are falsely attributing that idea to me, too.

Why should someone like my friend, (of whom I am very fond - I'm just using her as an example because I know her circumstances) have her NI paid for her for a total of 27 years when someone who can't afford not to work has to pay towards my friend's pension? Doodledog Fri 03-Sep-21 02:05:44

Why should you denigrate your "friend" because her contribution was seen by the state and not by you?

Why do you continue to promote that NI is separate; that it doesn't go straight into the general tax balance. Why do you insist that your "friends'" pension came out of other's NI contributions? You must know by now that it actually comes out of general taxation currently being paid not past NI contributions.

If we were paid pensions on a balance of the tax people - or households - have contributed over a lifetime you might find a very different outcome to the one we have. The state, however, pays what is a citizen's pension to all, one way or another. Nothing you have done in the past will stop you from getting one as it is assumed you have contributed in many ways - not just the grand God "paid work", neither can you get more than a set amount. It is limited by what any current government says it can afford.

that does not describe people being compelled to pay into a system that supports others who have more than they do.

That should read 'does not describe people on low pay being compelled to pay into a system that supports others who have more than they do'.

Maisie
I'd just say that when the ultimate freeloader now occupying No. 10 Downing Street says that it is right to remove the £20 uplift to UC because the people who are receiving it should 'work harder' it brings home the political divide very clearly.

I support the calls to keep the 'uplift' 100%, so we are in agreement about that.

The fact that I don't think that people who choose not to work because they can afford not to should automatically get pension credits, however, has nothing to do with my thoughts on benefits like UC. You are conflating two different things and arriving at the wrong conclusion about my thoughts. I firmly believe that benefits for the unemployed are far too low, and I also think that Johnson and his ilk are quite preposterous in their attitudes to the unemployed.

And that divide extends to those who judge others to be undeserving because they have taken a different path through life from their own.
Here we have a massive logical leap. What have I said that suggests that I think people are undeserving because their lives have been different from mine? I suppose the fact that I don't think that those who can afford not to work should not get pension credits could be seen as me thinking they don't deserve one, but I wouldn't put it like that - in my opinion they just aren't entitled to one, which is different.

A pension is something you get after a lifetime of work. Why should someone like my friend, (of whom I am very fond - I'm just using her as an example because I know her circumstances) have her NI paid for her for a total of 27 years when someone who can't afford not to work has to pay towards my friend's pension? That has nothing to do with her life having been different from mine. It has to do with basic fairness, and it does not mean that I think that anyone should live in poverty, as I said in my earlier post. Far from it - I think that nobody should do without in the fifth richest country in the world (or wherever we are in that league since Brexit). Again, you are conflating the two things and getting the wrong impression of what I am saying.

Pippa
I did not ascribing any religious motive to people's viewpoints. I am suggesting it has gone on to affect our general outlook on life - paticularly what we should go without to be seen as being good and what we do which is often seen as being bad.

Well, I think you can see from the thread about political parties' philosophies that there is not a single outlook on life. I am an atheist, and do not live my life by Protestant ethics, any more than I live it by other religious outlooks. I understand what is meant by the Protestant work ethic, and it does not describe my beliefs at all. As I have said, if there is a doctrine that describes my outlook it would be the Marxist 'from each according to ability, to each according to need', and that does not describe people being compelled to pay into a system that supports others who have more than they do. It's nothing to do with the Devil making work for idle hands, or the parable of the talents, sand I'd rather not be told what I think or why I think it.

Perhaps you can tell me how Cromwellian Protestants differed from the Taliban. Perhaps I could, but as I fail to see what either has to do with this thread, perhaps I won't bother.

Germanshepherdsmum I started work in’65 and thanks to the Dagenham woman I think those few years (70) make a large difference in how girls were treated. Also I wasn’t bragging how late I was working before birth but that the Gas Board didn’t want me, a pregnant woman, working as soon as I was ‘showing’.

I worked for the DWP, formerly DSS and DHS for 30 years. I have never forgotten a couple appearing at the counter demanding that the wife was entitled to a full state pension because she had worked for a four week period in one qualifying year only. She had never worked previously nor after. They became quite nasty despite their ages and screamed and shouted at me that due these 4 weeks she was definitely entitled to a full state pension. It was just one of the occasions I remember whilst working for the Benefits Agency/Job Centre that I encountered.

I must go to bed but I couldn't agree more Maisie.

I'm sorry if my post upset you, Doodledog. It obviously wasn't my intention.

It's late and I don't have the time to try and explain, but I can see where Pippa is coming from with the 'puritan work ethic', and I believe that this has a political aspect too.

I'd just say that when the ultimate freeloader now occupying No. 10 Downing Street says that it is right to remove the £20 uplift to UC because the people who are receiving it should 'work harder' it brings home the political divide very clearly. And that divide extends to those who judge others to be undeserving because they have taken a different path through life from their own.