“Whether a person earns £30,000 or £150,000, creeping taxation puts people off investing and saving for retirement and disincentivises those saving less from trying to save more in case they get caught by taxes coming lower and lower down the scale,” said WMA CEO Liz Field.
“These changes come after the Chancellor’s ‘savings revolution’ in his last Budget just four months ago, and follow his widely publicised and promoted new pensions freedoms,” Field added. “Constant shifts in government treatment of these issues reduce trust in government initiatives and increase the public cynicism with which policy announcements are met.
Field said the changes are counterproductive to savings and investment objectives and undermine their impact on jobs, growth, infrastructure development and the ability of people to look after themselves in later life.
“The changes encourage people to spend their pension money, rather than keeping it for the long term,” she said. “We need a long term government commitment to developing a full-scale investment and savings culture in the UK.”
