Winter Fuel Allowance decision is a massive own goal

I have a question - why is it so hard to means test something?

HMRC know everyone's income, the government know who they are paying benefits too and how much, everyone is linked by an NI number - this doesn't seem too hard?

It should be possible for anyone to login to some Government portal (or call someone), and give them your NI number and you should be able to be told all the benefits you're eligible for, which you're claiming, which you aren't, and what the impact should be.

Then it would be easy to say "anyone at or over pensionable age who earns less than X will receive the WFA"

I get that governments move slowly, but this should be achievable...
I don't know the answer but my guess would be that HMRC can tell you what happened last year but not this year so everything would have to be based on circumstances that may no longer be relevant. Seems like a suitable solution to me but there would be an issue with people not being able to get things that they need now if they have to wait a year until their eligibility is proven so would have to have something that bridged that gap.
 
I have a question - why is it so hard to means test something?

HMRC know everyone's income, the government know who they are paying benefits too and how much, everyone is linked by an NI number - this doesn't seem too hard?

It should be possible for anyone to login to some Government portal (or call someone), and give them your NI number and you should be able to be told all the benefits you're eligible for, which you're claiming, which you aren't, and what the impact should be.

Then it would be easy to say "anyone at or over pensionable age who earns less than X will receive the WFA"

I get that governments move slowly, but this should be achievable...
I'd imagine it's relatively easy to deal with PAYE employees (outside of side-hustles) but you only have to look at what happened with the Covid furlough payments to realise that the self-employed might be playing by the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it (if there can be such a thing).

Not a complaint or a whinge either. Just a reason why means-testing might not be as easy as it maybe could be.
 
I have a question - why is it so hard to means test something?

HMRC know everyone's income, the government know who they are paying benefits too and how much, everyone is linked by an NI number - this doesn't seem too hard?

It should be possible for anyone to login to some Government portal (or call someone), and give them your NI number and you should be able to be told all the benefits you're eligible for, which you're claiming, which you aren't, and what the impact should be.

Then it would be easy to say "anyone at or over pensionable age who earns less than X will receive the WFA"

I get that governments move slowly, but this should be achievable...
HMRC should probably know everyone’s declared taxable income. But with judicious use of the different allowances, particularly if you have no PAYE income, you can probably run up about 30k without a liability just for using basic allowances, and a lot more using exemptions. Does HMRC know about all of that? Especially if it’s accrued abroad?
 
@sherlock Did I miss your answer? After all you know the policy already. Could you enlighten us?
You're just baiting now, which is why I didn't reply.

You said we don't know what is in the budget, I said we know that the cut to winter fuel allowance is in the budget.

You then asking questions about my knowledge of the detail of the policy is then just deflection. We know it's coming, we know some pensioners who need it will lose if, and we know Labour are refusing to row back on it. That's all we need to know.
 
You're just baiting now, which is why I didn't reply.

You said we don't know what is in the budget, I said we know that the cut to winter fuel allowance is in the budget.

You then asking questions about my knowledge of the detail of the policy is then just deflection. We know it's coming, we know some pensioners who need it will lose if, and we know Labour are refusing to row back on it. That's all we need to know.

Just shows you have no idea what the final policy may be. No one does. People on more than 12k may well be able to get WFA.
 
Just shows you have no idea what the final policy may be. No one does. People on more than 12k may well be able to get WFA.
That’s on the government then. If they’ve allowed millions of pensioners to worry unnecessarily then that shows Labour in an even worse light.
 
Just shows you have no idea what the final policy may be. No one does. People on more than 12k may well be able to get WFA.
May get ?

What we do know is there are around 700,000 pensioners who are entitled to WFA and pension credits but due to reasons like I'll health, maybe onset dementia. Or simply finding the form too difficult to fill in they haven't applied for pension credit.


These pensioners will also almost certainly be on less than 12k because they qualify for pension credit. They are now considerably worse off because of this policy

How do you help them?They have lost the WFA they may well desperately need.

And before you say loads have applied for PC since this happened that's been refuted by Martin Lewis who says it will take many years at the current rate of take up to get everyone who qualifies to receive it.

This was a poorly thought out policy ,they had no current impact report to fall back on. God knows what they were thinking but compassion wasn't it.
 
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