A petition on the Labour Party Parliament website has urged the government to consider doubling the allowance given to retirees.
Major update in battle to ‘double’ state pensioners tax allowance from HMRC
A major update has been issued in the fight to “double” state pensioners’ tax allowance from HMRC. A petition on the Labour Party Parliament website has urged the government to consider doubling the allowance given to retirees.
A petition calls for the introduction of a “new tax code for state pensioners with double the personal allowance”. It has now been backed by 77,000 people – taking it to within 25,000 names of being debated in Parliament.
The petition tells the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP): “We want the government to introduce a new tax code for state pensioners, set at double the basic threshold. If this was implemented, pensioners would receive a higher tax-exempt limit, but wealthier pensioners would still pay tax.
READ MORE Smart motorway warning after grandmother, 68, dies in England
“We think that people with small private or workplace pensions are currently being taxed unfairly.” The petition has 73,765 signatures at the time of writing and 100,000 signatures are required to be considered for a debate in Parliament.
In a previous update, the DWP actually broke its silence and issued a response. This response was given on 9 December 2025.
In it, it said: “The State Pension is the foundation of support for pensioners. The Government is committed to a fair tax system but doubling the Personal Allowance for pensioners would be untargeted and costly.”
The petition was created by Timothy Hugh Mason with a deadline of 1 April 2026. All petitions run for 6 months, as per the website’s rules.
The DWP adds: “As announced at the Budget, the government will ease the administrative burden for pensioners whose sole income is the basic or new State Pension without any increments so that they do not have to pay small amounts of tax via Simple Assessment from 2027-28, if the new or basic State Pension exceeds the Personal Allowance from that point.
“The government is exploring the best way to achieve this and will set out more detail next year.”