THE EDITOR, Sir:
THE ANNUAL budget opera is over. What has it meant for us pensioners?
During his Budget presentation, the Minister of Finance singled out pensioners for special mention in relation to the new income tax threshold as if pensioners were getting some special benefit from the increase.
Pensioners age 65 and over have been granted relief of $45,000 above the threshold, and pensioners 70 and over, a relief of $90,000 before the threshold was last increased on January 1, 2001. So what is new?
From the figures quoted by the minister, a little elementary mathematics will show that all the pensioner has gained out of the announced new threshold is $48,672 a year, which is the same amount of increase applicable to all taxpayers.
To a large number of government pensioners, the income tax threshold is of little or no significance in relation to their pension.
Three-quarters of the pensioners retiring prior to 1995 are receiving a pension of $15,000 a month or less. These are civil servants, police officers, teachers (including headmasters and headmistresses of secondary schools), nurses, other health service retirees, among others.
On a pension of this order, what is there to talk about when the Government gives an increase which saves the taxpayer $1,000 a month in income tax?
On the other hand, that same budget imposes on these suffering pensioners an increase in property tax and an increase in GCT, which will cause an increase in the cost of food and drink, all the utilities and all the services that one must utilise in the business of day-to-day living. I shudder to think of the consequences for this group.
I am, etc.,
GOV'T PENSIONER
Kingston 6
