Treasury written question – answered on 15th July 2019.
Baroness Altmann
Conservative
To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of pensioners paid tax at (1) the 40 per cent, and (2) the 45 per cent, rate in each of the last three years.
Baroness Altmann
Conservative
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is (1) the total number, and (2) the percentage, of pensioners who had an annual income above £50,000 in each of the last three years; and whether they have a gender breakdown for those data.
Baroness Altmann
Conservative
To ask Her Majesty's Government what are the number and percentage of pensioners with annual incomes above £50,000, broken down by age, in each of the last three years.
Lord Young of Cookham
Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip), Lords Spokesperson (Cabinet Office)
For this answer pensioners have been defined as those over State Pension Age (SPA). The definition used is consistent with average SPAs from HMRC’s published Income Tax Liabilities Statistics. The average female SPA for the purposes of this are 63.75 years in 2016-17 and 64.5 years in 2017-18 (the male SPA is 65 in both). The average male and female SPA in 2018-19 is 65.25. i)
Estimates of the number of pensioners who had tax liabilities at the 40% and 45% rates of income tax:
Numbers: thousands
2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | |
40% | 537 | 514 | 508 |
45% | 34 | 35 | 37 |
i)
Estimates of the number of pensioners who had an annual income above £50,000 as:
Numbers: thousands
2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | |
Male | 311 | 342 | 361 |
Female | 107 | 110 | 113 |
Total | 418 | 451 | 474 |
ii)
Of these pensioners with income above £50,000, the age ranges are:
Numbers: thousands
2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | |
60-64 | 9 | 5 | |
65-69 | 170 | 171 | 170 |
70-74 | 108 | 131 | 145 |
75+ | 131 | 143 | 158 |
The number of 60-64 year old Pensioners reduces to zero by 2018-19 reflecting the increasing SPA for females over the time period shown.
The figures for 2016-17 are based on the latest outturn data from the Survey of Personal Incomes (SPI), 2017-18 and 2018-19 are projections based on the 2016-17 SPI, which are projected using economic assumptions consistent with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) March 2019 Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
For comparison to the total population of pensioners, Office of National Statistics (ONS) estimates of the population of the UK give the number of individuals by age. The number of pensioners in the UK can also be estimated using the average state pension age in each tax year:
12.3 million in 2016-17
12.2 million in 2017-18
12.0 million in 2018-19
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