LAST week’s letter from Phil Stone on increases to National Insurance to pay for more NHS and social care costs was good (‘Is NI rise fair?, Postbag, September 23), but the current system is so unbalanced.

Employees earning over £9,564 per year and up to £50,268 have to pay 12% of their income and then their employers contribute a further 13.8% only part of which is related to employment like sick pay.

Self-employed people pay from a similar threshold point a £158 sum per year plus 9% on their earnings from profits.

When I was self-employed and reached retirement age at 65, I couldn’t believe my payments just stopped. So pensioners just pay nothing.


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The purpose of National Insurance is to pay for the NHS, benefits and the state pension, but the retirement age cut off goes back to the 1960s. Then, most pensioners did not have strong private pensions, gym membership, motorhomes to tour Europe or have multiple homes to rent to struggling young people.

All three main political parties have been in governments this century, and have continued a very unfair insurance share falling on younger people who are the ones most likely to be in employment, faced with high costs for housing and raising families.

Young people need to get a grip; they need to tell the OAPs they use the National Health Service, getting their jabs first, and are most likely to need social care soon.

Covid 19 has now opened the door to pensioners paying a bigger share of their income above a similar income threshold, than the 1.5% health tax proposed for next year: on earnings both from employment and private pensions.

ROGER HOUSE
Taunton