Broadstone Pensions and Investments has said complaints from pensioners about Chancellor George Osborne's decision to freeze the personal allowance for over-65s next year are unjustified.
The announcement made in Wednesday's Budget drew a furious reaction from some quarters, with Saga director-general Dr Ros Altmann labelling it an ‘outrageous attack on decent middle-class pensioners’.
But John Broome Saunders, actuarial director at Broadstone said today: 'Frankly pensioners should stop whinging about this. Pensioners have enjoyed larger personal allowances for many years, and all the Chancellor has done is to extend these to everybody else.
'There was something perniciously ageist about a tax system that meant that a 70-year-old paid less income tax than a 50-year-old with identical income, and this decision goes some way to correct this.'
Mr Broome Saunders said that moves towards redistributing tax benefits in favour of working people were long overdue.
'Most current pensioners are the beneficiaries of final salary pension schemes that are providing them with pensions worth far more than originally anticipated, thanks to increasing life expectancy and lower interest rates. And they still benefit enormously from the fact that they are entirely exempt from National Insurance,' he said.
If plans to merge National Insurance with income tax went ahead, pensioners could be in for a 'much bigger shock', he added.
