‘I will be voting Labour for first time in 56 years after Conservatives’ stealth levies’

William Warren first voted Conservative 56 years ago, and he hasn’t deserted the party since. But its stealth tax raid on pensioners is making him think again.

The personal allowance – the amount individuals can earn tax- free – will remain at £12,570 until 2028, even as the triple lock inflates the state pension.

The freeze on tax thresholds will drag a further 850,000 pensioners into paying income tax within four years. Mr Warren is already doing so.

With a state pension of £733 a month, one private pension of £93 per month and an annual lump sum of £ 2,000 from another, plus dividend income, he is paying the income tax for the first time since he retired.

Last year he was hit with a tax bill of £ 360. “It’s not a great deal,” he says. “But I’m still paying tax, which I think is unfair, simply because they froze the thresholds.

“Hunt and Sunak have been useless as chancellors. I’m very angry about what they’ve done. If only we could have Thatcher, Lawson and Keith Joseph back. I’ve been a Conservative voter since I was 21 years old but I’m not voting Conservative this time.

“I know it’s a protest [ and] it’s going to let Labour in. But we need a dose of Starmer and Rayner etc, just to make the Tories wake up.”

Some 8.5 million pensioners pay income tax, but analysis by the House of Commons Library has found that freezing personal allowances will force 1.6 million more retirees to pay the tax than if the threshold had tracked inflation since 2021.

Without the freeze, personal allowances would have risen to £15,220 in 2024-25 and £15,990 in 2027-28.

It means some 850,000 more pensioners will pay the tax in 2028 than will do so this year, taking the total to a record 9.35 million, nearly double the 4.9 million who paid it when the Tories came to power in 2010. Over the same period, pensioners with private retirement incomes equal to the state pension have seen their average tax rates more than double from 3pc to 8pc, Lane Clark and Peacock, the pensions consultancy, has found.

With no mortgage and his partner Carole’s income from a rental property, Mr Warren, 77, considers himself lucky. He said: “We get by. Carole draws a pension and two can live almost as cheaply as one. Thankfully I don’t have a mortgage.

“But if I was still living on my own I’d be having to watch every penny. I would not be able to do a lot of the things we enjoy doing at the moment.

“There will be some pensioners being hit very hard. I’m lucky. I do feel for those who aren’t in that position.”

The Conservatives and Labour have pledged to stand by the “triple lock” that guarantees the state pension will rises by inflation, wage growth or 2.5pc, which ever is the greater.

After this year’s 8.5pc rise, from April 6, the full state pension will be £11,502. But each year the value of the triple lock will be eroded by the freeze on tax thresholds.

Full state pension income swallows up very nearly 92pc of the personal allowance, so retirees with small amounts of additional income will receive a tax bill.

Mattie Brignal