Pensioners: Income Tax
(asked on 28th August 2026) - View Source
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department has assessed the potential impact of the freezing of the personal income tax allowance since 2021 on pensioners’ disposable incomes; what estimate he has made of the number of pensioners brought into income tax as a result of that policy; and what discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the implications for recipients of the State Pension.
The number of individual income tax payers over State Pension Age over time can be seen in Table 2.1 of the Income Tax liabilities statistics: tax year 2023 to 2024 to tax year 2026 to 2027 - GOV.UK
The effect of threshold freezes on the number of people forecast to pay tax can be found in the OBR’s March 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook – detailed forecast tables: receipts, linked below.
The previous Government made the decision to maintain income tax thresholds at their current levels from April 2021 until April 2028 and this is reflected in HMRC’s statistics and in OBR’s forecasts.
The tax information and impact note on Maintaining the Personal Allowance and the basic rate limit for Income Tax, and equivalent National Insurance contributions thresholds until 5 April 2031 can be found linked below:
The Government intends to ease the administrative burden for pensioners so that they do not have to pay small amounts of tax via Simple Assessment from 27/28. The Government will set out more details in due course.