SOCIAL SECURITY TAXES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 8

SOCIAL SECURITY TAXES

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Your correspondent "Superannuitant" is voicing the position of many hundreds of people in this country. Men in like position paid a percentage of their earnings over a long period of years to provide for old age, until' 65 in many cases. That was a tax on their earnings. Now we have men at 60 who made no attempt to save put on a better footing. In my own case I paid Is 8d in the £ for over 20 years to receive a bare £4 a week at 65 and now I am to be mulcted in a further Is in the £, for which I am to receive no benefit. This is, I submit, the meanest of "means tests." What a premium it puts on the spendthrift! All these superannuitants paid their quota when a pound note went twice as far as it will go now, so that the amount they receive is only half the value they paid for it.

It is true that those in receipt of less than £4 per week can get the difference through the scheme, but look at the inquisitorial form to be filled up and what self-respecting man is going to line up each month for a couple of pounds or so at the Social Security counter? —I am, etc.,

ANOTHER SUPERANNUITANT.