Conservative MP for Ipswich, is proposing that every taxpayer in the country should received a statement explaining (a) what taxes they pay and (b) how those taxes are spent.

What do we think? Transparency good or bad mmkay?

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/parliament/2012/01/tory-mp-ben4ipswich-wants-every-taxpayer-to-receive-personalised-statement-of-how-their-hard-earned-.html

EDIT Doh, Mods, if you could give this a shove over there please >

if they included non-paye taxation like VAT and Council Tax it would be fairer.

I can see that being a bit too ‘individual’ though.

your council tax payment isnt recorded in the HMRC database, so wouldnt be possible without additional cost. Also VAT can only be interpolated very roughly from your income percentile, and even then I imagine there’s quite a degree of error in such a forecast.

I wonder if it will reflect non-PAYE tax payments like dividend tax etc. Dont see why not as it’s all in the same place at HMRC and can be calculated proportionally.

so they EU costs me £1 a year if I earn £26k?

what’s all the bloody fuss about?

I’m in favour, might make the government a bit less trigger happy when people can protest about the fact a fighting every other war cost them personaly £400 a year.

Council tax is already split up into polics, fire, education, other, but it usualy looks like 80% is ‘other’ on mine which is a bit useless.

VAT could at least be given as a national figure including other purchase taxes like fuel and cigaretts.

Not sure how they’d deal with corparation tax.

I like it. Better than just giving a big bill.

Surely it an’t cost much to implement?

£158 of other. Interesting. I reckon its puppies and kittens to feed cameron.

what next? a flex plan where you can decide where you tax dollars are spent? I’d go for that.

I’m all for a tax receipt with all the individual items paid for, just like in the shops. Then you can point it at arsey motorists and say “I pay for the friggin roads with my tax, I’ve got a receipt and everything LOOK!”

nice idea but quite frankly it’d be a waste of paper

and probably cost a few billion when you factor in the outsourced IT company failing to deliver ontime, walking away with the cash and another firm being brought in to clean up the mess on an identical contract

(mate works as an IT troubleshooter for the DWP and he sees this on a daily basis)

Seems like a good idea, it certainly makes the numbers and impact more understandable. Better than “we cut the xyz budget by £40million”.

good idea as we can see where our money really goes

No. I dont want to konw. It’ll just make me irritated. I just want them to take my money and waste/spend it and let me get on with wasting/spending what’s left.

I wonder what the “average” person pays in tax over a lifetime? How long would you have to live, for it to even out with pension etc….thinking about it, if you add in the vat/fuel duty etc, must come to a few quid.

Too open to propaganda, the information can be presented in a misleading way, which sections come first how its broken up or lumped together etc.

I wonder what the “average” person pays in tax over a lifetime? How long would you have to live, for it to even out with pension etc….thinking about it, if you add in the vat/fuel duty etc, must come to a few quid.

Does it matter if it evens out financially? The benefits of society go far beyond money.

My wife’s a teacher.

I like to kid myself that my entire tax, VAT, duty, council tax bill goes solely towards paying for her wages and that the tax she pays covers our kids education.

I’d quite like not to have my illusions shattered, really.

Would this be a typically complicated way of paying some consultants a few million pounds to do the equivalent of:

1. Calculate your total tax (Income tax + guesstimate VAT, customs & excise, etc)
2. Take the itemised Government budget
3. Divide the first by the second to calculate your proportional contribution to each item on the budget?

Does it matter if it evens out financially? The benefits of society go far beyond money.

I agree.

Too many people think tax is buying them something, and i can see that continuing with this kind of thing.

How many times have you heard the “you don’t pay road tax” argument!? It’l be like that but for everything! Why aren’t my bins emptied once per week, i pay more taxes etc..

Might have been a good idea in the good times to make the explain what they’ll be doing for the inevitable downturn maybe.

How many times have you heard the “you don’t pay road tax” argument!?

Once, about 5 minutes ago from my divisional director when I said I broke my arm cycling, I told him I also have 2 cars (should have added: and pay 2 lots of VED but no road tax, 2 lots of council tax and spend £3k a year on petrol)

Nice idea, but once you’ve read the letter and seen what goes where it’d go in the recycling bin. So, lots to set up and cost (probably), when all we need is a web tool where you pop in your gross salary and out comes a rough guide to what got spent where. I don’t think it really needs to be tailored personally.

It’s just interesting rather than necessary.

where is the Bear Patrol tax?

So, lots to set up and cost (probably), when all we need is a web tool where you pop in your gross salary and out comes a rough guide to what got spent where. I don’t think it really needs to be tailored personally.

this.

if you’re interested you’ll look if you’re not you won;t.

it woudln;’t even need the government to set it up – the data is all in the public domain.

Does it matter if it evens out financially?

no, just wondering…

if you’re interested you’ll look if you’re not you won;t.

I think the idea is to encourage engagement by taking a short cut across people’s natural apathy.

I like it. It’s a short step from there to hypothecation, which might be an acceptable way of increasing the tax & spend on something like the NHS.

Nice idea, but once you’ve read the letter and seen what goes where it’d go in the recycling bin. So, lots to set up and cost (probably), when all we need is a web tool where you pop in your gross salary and out comes a rough guide to what got spent where. I don’t think it really needs to be tailored personally.

It’s just interesting rather than necessary. Agreed, I guess a few quick questions could estimate VAT, Stamp Duty, Excise Duty on Fags & Booze etc too – rather than needing to be too specific. It would also be easy for govt to actually provide links that explain what each thing is (especially “other”, or some of the lines people might not really know), or why the numbers are changing. I like the idea – I don’t think it needs to be printed and sent to everyone though.

druidh – I like it. It’s a short step from there to hypothecation, which might be an acceptable way of increasing the tax & spend on something like the NHS.

Indeed, or for people to say, “do I really want to spend £1000 a year on the NHS? I wonder how much a private insurance policy would cost me…”

I would love to see hypothecation, esp with respect to environmental taxation as a transparent market correction for missed “polluter pays” costs.

I think trying to compare private medical insurance premia with personal contributions to NHS is a bad exercise and its going to need some clear wording to explain why they are not comparable.

Private domestic waste collection though could be one of those services that you ought to be able to compare cost and service with the public sector option.

EDIT: BTW it really would be a miniscule cost to implement. The calculation is formulaic based on the tax calculations that HMRC already have to do for your tax statement. Theyre already posting it to you, so there’s no additional distribution cost. Maybe one extra page of material. Costs almost zip.

Private domestic waste collection though could be one of those services that you ought to be able to compare cost and service with the public sector option.

What if you live in the sticks? It’s like the post office, it’d probably be easy for someone to make money colecting bins in a medium sized city, so everyone in Manchester would go private. This then leaves the people living in Glossop with a problem, their council tax is going up to pay for their bins to be collected, but the private company gives them an even higher quote.

Whereas the current system (council pays one private company to do everyone) should result in the best deal for everyone as the company will have to bid for the contract, lowest bid wins, everyone shares the low price.

The real question, however, is what point it would prove?

I know that I pay a lot of tax. Does knowing that I paid, say, £6000 towards education help me? I can’t escape paying it, and because I paid £6k rather than Mr Blokedownthestreet’s £3k (who earns less than me) or Ms Ivegotaporsche’s £10k (guess what, she earns more than me) doesn’t entitle any of us to any more or less say, does it?

I think it’s a brilliant idea tbh, so many complaints about tax, and about public spending, seem to stem from misinformation or ignorance. Good to have it all laid out in black and white, nice and easy to go, for example, “WTF! I pay twice as much for defence than I do for the police!” instead of “No coppers around, what do I pay my taxes for?”