Last week on his GB News show, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage claimed that because of ongoing tax threshold freezes and the increasing value of the state pension under the triple lock “we’re going to be dragging about nine million pensioners into taxation”.
This is misleading. We’ve contacted Mr Farage to ask what his figure is based on, but nine million is broadly the total number of pensioners who are currently paying income tax, most of whom would be paying it even without the threshold freezes.
Around 600,000 more pensioners have been brought into paying income tax as a result of the freezes than otherwise would have been the case. This figure is forecast to rise to one million by 2031.
Threshold freezes and pensions
The personal allowance—the amount you can earn before you start paying income tax—ordinarily increases each year in line with inflation, but has been frozen at £12,570 since April 2021. This freeze was due to end in April 2028, but at last year’s Budget it was further extended until April 2031.
While this freeze is ongoing the value of the state pension has continued to rise under the triple lock—a government policy which requires the state pension to be increased each year in line with whichever is highest of CPI inflation, earnings, or 2.5%. From April next year the value of the full new state pension is expected to exceed £12,570 for the first time.
This theoretically means that people whose sole income is from the new state pension will have to start paying income tax from April 2027, although the government has said this week that it will stand by a commitment made last year to prevent this from happening.
How many pensioners are affected?
The most recent figures show the state pension caseload in March 2026 was 13.3 million people. According to HMRC, 9.58 million people of state pension age are estimated to be liable for income tax in 2026/27.
It’s possible this is the figure Mr Farage was referring to—in an interview with GB News earlier in the month he claimed that “the next pension increase will take nearly 10 million pensioners into paying tax”. But the majority of pensioners have additional sources of income on top of the state pension from things like private workplace pensions, and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts suggest that almost all of this group would be paying income tax even without the threshold freeze.
The OBR’s latest forecast, published in March 2026, estimates that since the threshold freezes were introduced in April 2021 600,000 more people whose main source of income is the state pension were brought into paying income tax by 2026/27 than otherwise would have. This figure will increase to one million in 2030/31.
As mentioned above, the government has said that it plans to exempt people whose sole income is the state pension from paying income tax, which would affect these figures. And of course, pensioners who are already paying tax will pay more as their income increases.
