Tax Advantages For Elderly 'Should Be Reviewed'

“Policies that appear to give special advantages to older people as a category should be reviewed," a think tank has said.

The report, produced by the Fabian Society as part of a series for the Hanover housing charity, argues that older people who are better off, should "share the pain of deficit reduction".

The left-of-centre Fabian Society analysed data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (Elsa), producing a paper that suggests that the majority of older people are neither wealthy baby-boomers with "a surfeit of wealth and leisure" nor "pensioners on the breadline facing poverty, isolation and ill health".

Author Andrew Harrop writes: "The truth is that the majority of older people today are somewhere in between, neither rich nor poor, and the middle is expanding as a result of recent successes in reducing pensioner poverty.

"Of course this is something to welcome and celebrate, as part of the steady decline of pensioner poverty, but it has profound implications," he argues.

Age UK responded that more than half of pensioners do not receive enough money to pay any income tax at all.

(H/CD)