PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
National Insurance Contributions (16 January 2020)

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the potential contribution to the public purse if National Insurance was payable by individuals over the state pension age.

Asked by:
Dame Harriett Baldwin (Conservative)

The ‘Estimated Costs of Tax Reliefs’ publication sets out an estimate of the cost of the exemption from National Insurance contributions for those over state pension age. It is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/minor-tax-expenditures-and-structural-reliefs

This publication estimates the latest cost of this exemption in 2019-20 at around £1billion. The figures can be found in the ‘Estimated costs of structural tax reliefs’ table:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/837775/Structural_FINAL.xlsx

As noted in the publication, the estimated costs do not represent the yield if the exemption were to be abolished. In practice if a relief was withdrawn, taxpayers’ behaviour would often alter so that the actual yield would be very different from, and often smaller than, that shown in the tables.

Answered by:
Jesse Norman (Conservative)
23 January 2020