BBC May have to Pay For Pensioners Free TV Licences

The government is considering transferring to the BBC the cost of providing Free TV licences for the over 75's. Estimated to cost £600M a year.

Another consideration is to add this as a payment to their pension making it taxable which would reduce the cost by about a £120M

24 hour break to show how tired I am of having to go and find your sources, i.e. to check you are not making this stuff up.

Where else but...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545648/BBC-...

Seems to be a repeat of a story they ran back in October 2010
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1321681/BBC-...

- must be short of stuff to print at the Fail. The story suggests that doing so would add £20 a year to the license cost for everyone else

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The government is considering transferring to the BBC the cost of providing Free TV licences for the over 75's. Estimated to cost £600M a year.

Another consideration is to add this as a payment to their pension making it taxable which would reduce the cost by about a £120M

I hardly see that adding £145.50 to someones pension would push them into paying tax on their total yearly income unless Bob is one of the richer DailyMuck readers .

Quite happy to pay, government just need to amend rules. Not 75 yet.
Unlike some, if I watch it live or on demand, I pay. After all there is a cost to produce.
Pensioners probably make more use of live TV than others.

In reply to a post by KelvinBridge:

I hardly see that adding £145.50 to someones pension would push them into paying tax on their total yearly income

You wrongly assume that all pensioners are poor and within the Tax-free Personal Allowance.

The OP said 'taxable', i.e. capable of being taxed. not 'taxed'. It was just about the costs of the various options.

--edit--

ok so pensioners already get free tv licenses but the cost is been transferred from the DWP to the bbc.

In my opinion really they should be paying it themselves (as long as the tv licence exists) as the working age poor have to pay it.

Its funny that this government claims the state does too much hand holding yet they are telling councils and now organisations that they are not allowed to charge or raise fees for a section of the population.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 26-Jan-14 09:38:45)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

--edit--

ok so pensioners already get free tv licenses but the cost is been transferred from the DWP to the bbc.

In my opinion really they should be paying it themselves (as long as the tv licence exists) as the working age poor have to pay it.

Its funny that this government claims the state does too much hand holding yet they are telling councils and now organisations that they are not allowed to charge or raise fees for a section of the population.

Agreed there should be no handholding,as long as councils and organisations
use the money raised for infrastructure. Rather than their over sized £200K salaries citing that is what they would get in Private Industry
There are such government initiatives such as Working Tax Credit.
Many Pensioners have seen there savings dwindle due to interest rates fall from 5 to virtually zero per cent and cannot get top up for being thrifty.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by KelvinBridge:

I hardly see that adding £145.50 to someones pension would push them into paying tax on their total yearly income

You wrongly assume that all pensioners are poor and within the Tax-free Personal Allowance.

The OP said 'taxable', i.e. capable of being taxed. not 'taxed'. It was just about the costs of the various options.

He actually said ''as a payment to their pension making it taxable[[/b]/b] ie making it taxable, not capable of being taxed which would suggest that £145. pushed someone over the HMRC tax bands for over the 65's or over 75's , and even extra £29 income tax outlay for the TV licence would still be fantastic value, assuming ones income was over £10,500 and taxed .

OP never said anything like that, but then we don't know where your quote ends, nor the bold. nor the repetition.

Whole post is nonsense!.

They may already be over the tax threshold, according to this link some 5.6 million of the 12 million pensioners (April 2012 article) are over the tax threshold.

So near enough half would then be liable for 20% tax on £145, i.e. £29 as said earlier. Possibly not a show stopper for many, personally I wouldn't mind, but I wouldn't dream of pretending to say something like "the majority of..." as I haven't asked them or undertaken a survey.

Clearly if the BBC is to continue to exist it needs a revenue stream. That can come from a variety of source such as adverts, a licence fee, general taxation, subscriptions,, etc. Advertising seems to be race to the bottom in programme quality, though some of the BBC's output may be getting there already.

Perhaps we should revert to having a separate radio licence, and while we're at it, a separate licence for radios in cars, as used to be the case.

We're happy to pay the £145 for the BBC, though rarely listen to BBC radio. We use TV, a variety of channels, depends on what's on. Absolutely no interest in paying Murdoch or Branson for the privilege of watching their TV output, but if others so choose, that's fine by us.

There perhaps should be a real national debate about the BBC. Do we want it? What should its remit be? Should TV be separated from radio? How should it be funded? What about the BBC World Service?

There are a host of questions, knee-jerk reactions to excesses, and daily tabloid reporting, are not necessarily a good way forward.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

OP never said anything like that, but then we don't know where your quote ends, nor the bold. nor the repetition.

Whole post is nonsense!.

Maybe we should stick to the subject, rather than pompous English lectures

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

OP never said anything like that, but then we don't know where your quote ends, nor the bold. nor the repetition.

Whole post is nonsense!.

________________________________


Sorry that my post is unclear to you, but Bob did say that and I'll quote his entire post, and he did say ''making it taxable'



[In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The government is considering transferring to the BBC the cost of providing Free TV licences for the over 75's. Estimated to cost £600M a year.

Another consideration is to add this as a payment to their pension making it taxable which would reduce the cost by about a £120M]]

In reply to a post by KelvinBridge:

he did say ''making it taxable'

Exactly and I explicitly said he did.

I was pointing out to pevious poster that "taxable" is not = "taxed".

A rather nice quotation I saw on line the other day may have some bearing on my feelings (and that of some others) on the BBC.

Rod Serling
"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."