"Tax is a Moral Issue"

[rob1]

I think the Duck has a very good point what we need to do is lower the government spending rather than put up taxes. While it seems obscene that these big multi nationals pay none or very little tax I can sort of see the argument about them employing lots of british workers who pay tax on their earnings and the small firms that supply the big ones also employ people, where the problem is those that earn money here but dont employ here,IE internet companies. Also the salaries of the top earners are way too high so I can see that for those over say £1000,000 the tax rate should be much higher, dont hold with the argument about you need to pay these multi million salaries to attract top people,what will they do if you dont? The gap between those who earn £100,000 plus and the normal Brit is getting too large, it is all very well saying you need to encourage the best but we also need to show the kids today that they can earn a living wage or they will just say bugger that I will live off the state

 

[Qman]

When asked on TV if taxes should be raised to pay for nurses etc, the audience claps wildly. If you asked each person they would say not me just everyone else.

 

[Campbell]

People on PAYE are the 'milch cow' for any goverment and so have very little choice in how much to hand over. In business however, we have the option of finding ways to reduce our liabilities. Hence office cleaners can have a higher % tax take than their director employers.
Tax everyone at the same rate [say 15%] no allowances, no relief, no dodging and no need for accountants. Simples?

 

[exmoor dave]

People on PAYE are the 'milch cow' for any goverment and so have very little choice in how much to hand over. In business however, we have the option of finding ways to reduce our liabilities. Hence office cleaners can have a higher % tax take than their director employers.
Tax everyone at the same rate [say 15%] no allowances, no relief, no dodging and no need for accountants. Simples?

Yep and make sure it's collected!

Instead of dreaming up ever more sneaky and complex taxes. Make it simple and free up resources to get it collected!

 

[brynseiri]

What do they pay on the continent? Don't the Germans pay something like 40% but fuel, food, council tax etc is p1ss cheap, as are goods?

 

[rob1]

What do they pay on the continent? Don't the Germans pay something like 40% but fuel, food, council tax etc is p1ss cheap, as are goods?

Cost of living is much the same the world over just depends on how you pay, either through tax or cost of goods. Best mate mived to ireland because he said it was cheaper to live, soon found out it was much the same. All governments get as much out of their populations as they can just do it in different ways

 

[brynseiri]

Cost of living is much the same the world over just depends on how you pay, either through tax or cost of goods. Best mate mived to ireland because he said it was cheaper to live, soon found out it was much the same. All governments get as much out of their populations as they can just do it in different ways

But, would it not be better to have a "that is your tax bill end of" system rather than our Chinese puzzle system of stealth tax?

 

[2tractors]

`Not that I will ever be in the highest earners and wouldn't normally defend the rich but if you look at the stats the top 1% of tax payers contribute almost 30% of tax received by HMRC. If you look at the 40% tax bracket those people contribute a further 34%. The 50% of taxpayers who pay least tax don't pay enough to cover the housing benefit payments! So it would appear the rich are paying their share- I am fairly sure I have read somewhere that 80% of the UK population take more out of the system than they put in; if the top earners were squeezed so much they upped sticks it would be the poor that would be hurt most.

In my experience doing a lot of work with the public sector there is an awful amount of wasted money because its not their money they are spending, if it were a lot less would be spent.

 

[DrWazzock]

In my view there should be 100% capital gains tax when agricultural land is sold for building development. Why should the landowner receive an unearned windfall at the mortgage payers expense? Its not earned income in any way.

Nobody "earns" more than £50000 a year so income over that amount should be 100% tax as well.

It would in fact set a maximum wage. Would it cause me to leave the country? No. Why ever would it?

 

[Goweresque]

This chart shows why it matters little what nominal tax rates are imposed, the result will be no great difference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending

You will see that it is very hard to raise more than 40% of your GDP in taxes. Only 13 nations in the world manage that. Only 4 raise more than 45%. Its noticeable that smaller racially homogenous nations such as the Scandinavian ones are over represented in that 40%+ group. Like it or not, its easier to get the population to pay more towards the collective if the collective looks like you. Not so much if it looks like Abu Hamza. The biggest countries in the 40+ group are Italy and France at just below 45%, which looks like the very pinnacle that can be achieved by a large Western democracy, in peacetime at least.

The UK currently raises c.39% of GDP in taxes, but spends 47%. It is an open trading economy, with a significant immigrant section of its population. It is unlikely that much more tax can be raised from the people without either a) driving economic activity abroad, or b) driving voters to vote for lower tax parties. Thus we are left with the current strategy - try and constrain public spending as much as possible (not actually cut it because that has proved virtually impossible in post 1970 UK history), and hope the economy grows such that c.40% of it rises up to meet the c.£700bn the government spends every year. At the rate we're going that's going to take to nearly 2020, on UK Treasury's own (optimistic) projections. 2020 is 12-13 years from the crash of 2007/8. Its highly unlikely the world economy will expand nonstop for that length of time, and some sort of global recession should be expected at some point. At which point the UK spending deficit explodes again. We cannot repeat the massive expansion of public debt that has occurred (and is occurring today and will do for the best part of the next decade). At such a point we WILL have to make expenditure match income. No two ways about it. We are 40 years into a massive experiment in public finance - the idea that modern economies can run spending deficits in perpetuity with impunity. A longer view of history tells us such confidence is utterly misplaced.

 

[Salopian_Will]

In my view there should be 100% capital gains tax when agricultural land is sold for building development. Why should the landowner receive an unearned windfall at the mortgage payers expense? Its not earned income in any way.

Nobody "earns" more than £50000 a year so income over that amount should be 100% tax as well.

It would in fact set a maximum wage. Would it cause me to leave the country? No. Why ever would it?

Do you read the Morning Star, Lenin?

Do you farm in a collective Comrade?

Probably the fastest way to make the country bust and the population starving I have ever read. To make it worse they would have no homes to live in.

 

[Goweresque]

In my view there should be 100% capital gains tax when agricultural land is sold for building development. Why should the landowner receive an unearned windfall at the mortgage payers expense? Its not earned income in any way.

Nobody "earns" more than £50000 a year so income over that amount should be 100% tax as well.

It would in fact set a maximum wage. Would it cause me to leave the country? No. Why ever would it?

Hmm. Not quite though that one through I think: 100% CGT tax on development land = no-one ever sells any land for development again. Why would you? You're not going to make anything out of it. Result - zero new houses built while such a policy is in place, unless you're going to forcibly take land from people as well?

And as for a £50K cap on income, again, you haven't really thought that one through either: if you can't earn more than £50K, then no-one would be paid more than £50k, what would be the point? The employee wouldn't get any extra pay, it would just be given straight to the taxman. So everyone's salary would be £50K max, whatever job they did. Ergo all the tax revenue that currently comes from those that do (and its a lot as others have pointed out above) disappears. And of course huge numbers would just leave the UK anyway, and you wouldn't even get the tax from their £50k.

 

[SteveHants]

As a poor sheep keeping hill farmer i earn very little but i believe that there should just be a flat (&open!!) rate of tax for everyone.
I just can't see why, just because someone earns more that they should have to pay a higher % in tax, not to mention the more you earn the less services you are lucky to use from the state.

As for leftist politicians and do gooders whinging bout the injustices of low earners paying taxes at all saying high earners should just pay it all.....put a sock in it!! Everyone is in it together, the gov will happily frittter the money regardless of who's paid it

The point of that idea is (whether I agree with it or not) that the cost of living (and by that I mean the basics of feeding yourself etc) is roughly similar for everyone and the more you earn over that amount, the greater the amount of tax you should pay on it. If you had a flat rate of tax, that would be disproportionatley more of a burden on those who earn less. If you were to set your 'standard rate' of tax at, say 10% - imagine earning 15K and paying £1500 in tax before you even take it home...and then trying to live on it....

 

[neilo]

In my view there should be 100% capital gains tax when agricultural land is sold for building development. Why should the landowner receive an unearned windfall at the mortgage payers expense? Its not earned income in any way.

Nobody "earns" more than £50000 a year so income over that amount should be 100% tax as well.

It would in fact set a maximum wage. Would it cause me to leave the country? No. Why ever would it?

Right on brother. I could think of quite a few that "earn" well over £50k a year, by virtue of working damned hard and risking an awful lot of their own capital. You stop those, by taxing any income over that at 100%, then you stop them building businesses, creating jobs and developing the economy.

I'd suggest that you 100% CGT on development land, effectively limiting land sales to ag value, would stop the house building industry dead in it's tracks, leading to an even bigger shortfall in housing stocks and a further escalation in already ridiculously inflated house prices. But hell, the proletariat don't need houses, they'll be out every night protesting about the privileged few.

 

[Brisel]

This chart shows why it matters little what nominal tax rates are imposed, the result will be no great difference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending

You will see that it is very hard to raise more than 40% of your GDP in taxes. Only 13 nations in the world manage that. Only 4 raise more than 45%. Its noticeable that smaller racially homogenous nations such as the Scandinavian ones are over represented in that 40%+ group. Like it or not, its easier to get the population to pay more towards the collective if the collective looks like you. Not so much if it looks like Abu Hamza. The biggest countries in the 40+ group are Italy and France at just below 45%, which looks like the very pinnacle that can be achieved by a large Western democracy, in peacetime at least.

The UK currently raises c.39% of GDP in taxes, but spends 47%. It is an open trading economy, with a significant immigrant section of its population. It is unlikely that much more tax can be raised from the people without either a) driving economic activity abroad, or b) driving voters to vote for lower tax parties. Thus we are left with the current strategy - try and constrain public spending as much as possible (not actually cut it because that has proved virtually impossible in post 1970 UK history), and hope the economy grows such that c.40% of it rises up to meet the c.£700bn the government spends every year. At the rate we're going that's going to take to nearly 2020, on UK Treasury's own (optimistic) projections. 2020 is 12-13 years from the crash of 2007/8. Its highly unlikely the world economy will expand nonstop for that length of time, and some sort of global recession should be expected at some point. At which point the UK spending deficit explodes again. We cannot repeat the massive expansion of public debt that has occurred (and is occurring today and will do for the best part of the next decade). At such a point we WILL have to make expenditure match income. No two ways about it. We are 40 years into a massive experiment in public finance - the idea that modern economies can run spending deficits in perpetuity with impunity. A longer view of history tells us such confidence is utterly misplaced.

Excellent post!

And somewhat worrying.

 

[exmoor dave]

The point of that idea is (whether I agree with it or not) that the cost of living (and by that I mean the basics of feeding yourself etc) is roughly similar for everyone and the more you earn over that amount, the greater the amount of tax you should pay on it. If you had a flat rate of tax, that would be disproportionatley more of a burden on those who earn less. If you were to set your 'standard rate' of tax at, say 10% - imagine earning 15K and paying £1500 in tax before you even take it home...and then trying to live on it....

ah but isn't that the point of the personal allowance before you start paying tax?

 

[DrWazzock]

Hmm. Not quite though that one through I think: 100% CGT tax on development land = no-one ever sells any land for development again. Why would you? You're not going to make anything out of it. Result - zero new houses built while such a policy is in place, unless you're going to forcibly take land from people as well?

And as for a £50K cap on income, again, you haven't really thought that one through either: if you can't earn more than £50K, then no-one would be paid more than £50k, what would be the point? The employee wouldn't get any extra pay, it would just be given straight to the taxman. So everyone's salary would be £50K max, whatever job they did. Ergo all the tax revenue that currently comes from those that do (and its a lot as others have pointed out above) disappears. And of course huge numbers would just leave the UK anyway, and you wouldn't even get the tax from their £50k.

Then why do farmers sell land for farming? Plenty do.

The revenue from those currently earning more than 50 k is not actually that great as a proportion of tax receipts, which is why governments don't bother raising taxes on high earners. When I worked for GEC, no productive employ was paid anything like 50k, that is workers, engineers, project managers, salesmen and other folk who actually did the work and got the orders in and delivered the goods Those in the layers above, who really served no useful purpose as far as the business was concerned were paid a lot more and if they had left the country, GEC might still have been a big manufacturer and employer today.

I just don't get this money grabbing attitude. It is what one can do for others that really brings satisfaction, not what can amass in excess for oneself.

 

[SteveHants]

ah but isn't that the point of the personal allowance before you start paying tax?

Yes, kind of - that is now 10K, I think. Nobody is expecting you to live on 10K though but it is seen as a contribution towards basic living costs. It would still be unfair to tax people on 15K the same rate on their 5K as it would those on 50K on their 40K - a flat rate of tax would only be 'fair' if everybody got paid a living wage and got that ammount tax free.

 

[Salopian_Will]

Then why do farmers sell land for farming? Plenty do.

The revenue from those currently earning more than 50 k is not actually that great as a proportion of tax receipts, which is why governments don't bother raising taxes on high earners. When I worked for GEC, no productive employ was paid anything like 50k, that is workers, engineers, project managers, salesmen and other folk who actually did the work and got the orders in and delivered the goods Those in the layers above, who really served no useful purpose as far as the business was concerned were paid a lot more and if they had left the country, GEC might still have been a big manufacturer and employer today.

I just don't get this money grabbing attitude. It is what one can do for others that really brings satisfaction, not what can amass in excess for oneself.

Well this money grabbing attitude is why we are a developed country today, are not living a subsistence lifestyle, can live long and healthy lives and can make the best of our short time on this planet.

If you feel that this is wrong then your forum handle is very apt.

 

[SteveHants]

Right on brother. I could think of quite a few that "earn" well over £50k a year, by virtue of working damned hard and risking an awful lot of their own capital. You stop those, by taxing any income over that at 100%, then you stop them building businesses, creating jobs and developing the economy.

This is something of a strawman - there are also people who either a) "earn" well over that having done nothing and who continue to do nothing (see: inherited wealth) b) "earn" well over that by having been in the right place at the right time or c) some kind of combination of the above.

You might well argue that those who work damn hard to earn that kind of wage are doing it wrong - the way to be the most effective at accumulating capital is doing the least work for the most reward. My brother, who is a corporate banker has often said to me that the way to be the most successful and wealthy businessman is to be a good middleman - own as little as possible, do as little as possible and certainly don't produce anything, for god's sake.