Why should old people keep working to pay more National Insurance?

SIR – I was a working old-age pensioner for four years, to allow me to pay off my mortgage, which had been substantially increased to fund the “Bank of Mum and Dad”.

Through continuing to work I paid an extra £4,000 a year in income tax and fuel duties for travel. Lord Willetts, the chairman of the Resolution Foundation, has now proposed that working pensioners should be subject to National Insurance contributions (Juliet Samuel, Business, May 8).

Had that already been the case, I might well have decided that it would be better for me to retire entirely rather then pay a high proportion of my additional earnings in taxes for a job that involved travel and shift work in an industrial environment.

Another unfairness is that an additional tax on working pensioners would allow non-working wealthy pensioners to keep a greater share of their income. Ted Shorter

Tonbridge, Kent SIR – Many pensioners still work because they must, in order to exist and pay their bills. They may not be the ones needing care in old age, as working helps keep them healthy.

Why, after a lifetime in work, paying taxes and National Insurance, should they be asked to pay again for an inefficient NHS, which wastes money and pays vast numbers of ineffective management staff exorbitant wages? Patricia Bateson

Bressingham, Norfolk

SIR – Today’s pensioners have paid in all their lives. Today’s youngsters will receive the same benefits when they become pensioners, unless the current Government dictates otherwise.

Pensioners live off a state pension and any other pension or savings that they have contributed to throughout their working lives. The government of the time encouraged just that.

However, many pensions and the interest on savings have fallen drastically because of the drop in interest rates since the crisis of 2008. During the Eighties, today’s pensioners paid interest rates on their mortgages of up to 14.5 per cent. Pensioners at that time received a good income from their savings.

Today, people receive a pittance from savings because interest rates are so low. In effect, pensioners subsidise youngsters’ mortgages.

The value to society of pensioners should not be underestimated. Many parents could not afford to go to work if their parents did not look after the children. Peter Amey

Hoveton, Norfolk

SIR – As the parent of four millennial sons, I can see the logic behind the Resolution Foundations’s proposed Citizens’ Inheritance of £10,000 for everyone when they reach the age of 25, though I consider it flawed.

As a shareholder in a chain of microbrewery pubs, I think it is a splendid idea! Michael Parker

New Malden, Surrey