PM’s team rules out £10,000 payouts for the young

THE GOVERNMENT has “no plans” to adopt proposals for reform of inheritance tax to fund a £10,000 payment to help 25-yearolds get started in life, Downing Street has said.

The one-off payment – to be spent on housing, education, training, setting up a business or investing in pensions – is one of a set of ideas in a report aimed at improving fairness between the generations.

The Intergenerational Commission also recommended that pensioners who continue to work after retirement age should pay national insurance to fund a £2.3bn windfall for the NHS. And it said strained social care services should receive the same amount via a property tax.

Under the commission’s proposals, inheritance tax would be abolished and replaced with a new “lifetime receipts tax” to fund a “citizen’s inheritance” worth £10,000 to every 25-yearold. The new levy would be imposed on all gifts and inheritances above a threshold of £125,000 received over the course of an individual’s lifetime, at a rate of 20 per cent up to a value of £500,000 and 30 per cent above this level.

Asked whether Theresa May saw any merit in the citizen’s inheritance proposal, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “We don’t have any plans to adopt this idea.”

The spokesman pointed to measures introduced by the Government to assist younger people, including increasing the minimum wage, lifetime ISAs, help with getting onto the housing ladder and a national railcards for 26 to 30 year-olds.

The commission, chaired by the former Conservative Minister David Willetts alongside Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary, called for an “NHS levy” funded by national insurance on the earnings of workers over the state pension age as well as on some occupational pension income.

Among a series of other recommendations from the Commission were a £1bn “better jobs deal” to help young people.