Blimey! Has the worm finally turned 😯

The rich need to contribute more

“If we are going to ask people for more sacrifices over a longer period of time, a longer period of belt-tightening as a country, then we just have to make sure that people see it is being done as fairly and as progressively as possible,” Clegg said.

What? So maybe the tax cuts for the richest in society – the ones that you voted for – might not be seen as us all being in this together after all?

predictable protect-your-rich-friends Tory response from Gideon though:

Osborne said: “I am clear that the wealthy should pay more, which is why in the recent budget I increased the tax on very expensive property transactions. But we also have to be careful as a country we don’t drive away the wealth creators and the businesses that are going to lead our economic recovery.”

Will that be the new tax that like every other one, your rich friends are avoiding actually paying then George? While you decreased their overall tax burden by 5% 🙄

If you tax the rich too much they will just bugger off. I am not rich, but get fed up with taxing those who have done well for themselves.

For example. All my local bridleways are overgrown and a lot of the roads I ride along are rubbish strewn. If you were to say the unemployed on welfare had to contribute 3 days a week to bridleway clearing and tidying up in the community and the other 2 days job hunting, the government could save money.

The welfare bill in this country is massive and that is what needs to be tackled. I am also in favour of those who genuinely cannot work or care for disabled ones, should be given priority over an able bodied person who chooses not too.

You should have to work for welfare and not just accept it is your given right to have them.

You are Ian Duncan Smith and I claim my council tax relief and bowl of gruel!!! 😀

I have nothing useful to add to the above, except this:

I’m sure Mr Clegg will be the first to pony up given his privileged background. In fact, there’s nothing stopping him from paying more to various charities who’ve had their funding slashed under this government.

Just another media sound bite from this hypocrite.

If you tax the rich too much they will just bugger off. I am not rich, but get fed up with taxing those who have done well for themselves.

This is a theory, but there is very little evidence to support it. They said the same with the taxes on banker’s bonuses and very few bankers left over it even though they all claimed they would.

NB if my tax went up 10%, I might moan about it, but I’d still live in the UK – not that I’m rich by any means.

Do I detect a Libdem conference coming up?

If you make people on welfare work, the argument goes, that it takes away work from the ‘marketplace’ i.e. that work could be done by businesses and not artificially undercut by the state!

I’m not convinced the welfare bill in this country is that big compared to others either, there are compelling arguments that we live in a low tax/low spend economy. But then I am a left wing, hand wringing, bleeding heart liberal, sorry about that!

Either way though, Nick Clegg can’t do anything to make the Lib Dems gain what they’ve lost so it’s all a bit pointless. Wish he’d just go.

Well, seeing as Hollande’s plan to do very much the same in France seems to be spectacularly backfiring in exactly the same way the ‘right wing loons’ said it would, I’d suggest that Osborne has a point!

http://www.cityam.com/latest-news/french-bankers-escape-hollande

Funny how a discussion on the rich almost always turns into a welfare debate.

The welfare bill is massive, you are right. However, doesn’t that indicate that more taxation might be useful? With that extra revenue the government could put people back to work.

FFS we don’t need to increase tax on anyone, just close the tax evasion/avoidance loopholes so that everyone pays what they should now.

You should work for at least minimum wage.

Have to say, I’ve never really understood the whole “make the rich pay more tax” thing.

Surely income tax is a percentage of income, so those with high incomes do already pay more without the need to introduce higher and higher percentage bands?

Plus of course I suspect the very wealthy get much of their money from investment rather than salary, or pay expensive accountants to avoid the income tax – so it probably isn’t really that effective anyway and ends up hurting the well off, rather than the wealthy.

Besides all that, I suspect Clegg is just trying to regain a little bit of credibility as he no doubt realises that the coalition will ultimately split and he needs to make some serious amends to regain disaffected LibDem voters.

FFS we don’t need to increase tax on anyone, just close the tax evasion/avoidance loopholes so that everyone pays what they should now.

this ^^^^

The benefits bill is effing massive due to the Tories blindly believing the old Thatcherite assertion that high unemployment is a ‘price worth paying’ for their mindlessly myopic ideology

For example. All my local bridleways are overgrown and a lot of the roads I ride along are rubbish strewn. If you were to say the unemployed on welfare had to contribute 3 days a week to bridleway clearing and tidying up in the community and the other 2 days job hunting, the government could save money.

Sounds good, but probably not.
At the moment they pay people to sit on their arses, and they don’t pay people to clear bridleways. To save money, any alternative will have to cost less than this.
If we were to do what you say, we would still pay them the same amount, but also have to pay for for foremen to check they’re doing what they’re told, middle managers to assign tasks to foreman, some monsterous IT system, hundreds of people managing said IT system, equipment, transport to and from sites etc. So I don’t think there’s a money saving case to be made. There might be an ideological case to be made, but that’s different.

The tax burden needs to be shifted away from income, which is easily hidden away offshore, to wealth.

GrahamS, the country’s (self inflicted) recession is longer than the government expected. Something has got to give. Who do you suggests bare this extra cost. Those who can or those who can’t?

However, doesn’t that indicate that more taxation might be useful? With that extra revenue the government could put people back to work.

Alternatively, just think what the public might do with all that money the government take off them instead – like spend the weekend mountainbiking in Wales, creating jobs in hotels, cafe’s, bike shops, etc.

Wikipedia tells me that the UK collected £600billion in tax in 2008, we borrowed more on top of that.

Part of me thinks we shuold look at how we spend this money before going looking for more.

Presumably this is the same Nick Clegg who was telling us all about the Lib Dems local property tax a while back – under which most of us would “save” by paying 3% of the property value each year instead of council tax?

…The same Nick Clegg who hadn’t actually bothered to work out that for most of the country, that would mean a substantial hike in the amount of tax they were paying for local services. Maybe all of those people were “rich” and needed to pay more?

… or the same Clegg that argues for Transparency except when it impacts him http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9198272/Nick-Clegg-wants-to-let-MPs-keep-family-fortunes-under-wraps.html

What gets me riled about Clegg is that he’s the archetypal Eurocrat – having filled his pockets with unreceipted expenses and allowances during his time as an MEP, he then has the audacity to lecture us on the need for people to pay more – ostensibly so that the “system” can continue to waste money on the type of ridiculous expense arrangements that he, his wife and his merry LibDem chums have done very nicely out of.

What we really need to hear is the reforming voices who can argue the need for good public services at a tax level that is affordable / sustainable. Clegg’s comments are just more self-serving guff – exactly the same sort of cobblers we heard before the last election when he basically promised the world to anyone who would listen.

just think what the public might do with all that money the government take off them instead – like spend the weekend mountainbiking in Wales, creating jobs in hotels, cafe’s, bike shops, etc.

Or funneling it through their wife’s offshore bank account in Monaco?

That could be easily achieved by the local council creating more jobs and employing these folk at the standard minimum wage. Is that what you meant?

If the rich are paying no taxes anyway – what difference will it make if they bugger off or not? This is a serious question.

The tax burden needs to be shifted away from income, which is easily hidden away offshore, to wealth.

isn’t wealth also hidden away offshore?

Surely income tax is a percentage of income, so those with high incomes do already pay more without the need to introduce higher and higher percentage bands?

I haven’t read the original link, but though a sleepy haze this morning I thought he was talking about alternatives to income tax, mainly as those with higher incomes are quite good at hiding that income. But I think mt has probably hit the crux of the matter.

If you tax the rich too much they will just bugger off. I am not rich, but get fed up with taxing those who have done well for themselves.

Not all rich people are selfish and greedy.

The award-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has said rich people should pay more tax to save others being hit by government spending cuts.

Mark Haddon, whose book has sold more than two million copies, spawned a stage version and is being adapted as a film by Brad Pitt, said he was ‘not asking just an economic question but a moral one, too’.

He said he had put his opinions in a letter to his MP, sent in February, which read: ‘I’m a wealthy person. Austerity measures introduced by the coalition have caused real suffering to many people, but my comfortable life hasn’t changed in the slightest.

‘Why have I, and people like me, been asked to contribute nothing?’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2187581/Mark-Haddon-author-The-Curious-Incident-Dog-Night-time-said-rich-people-pay-MORE-tax.html

Alternatively, just think what the public might do with all that money the government take off them instead – like spend the weekend mountainbiking in Wales, creating jobs in hotels, cafe’s, bike shops, etc.

That’s an argument for more people getting paid more.

Isn’t wealth hidden offshore

It’s difficult to hide a house abroad…

That’s an argument for more people getting paid more.

Like a living wage perhaps? That way we, as taxpayers, stop effectively subsiding the profits of companies like Tesco by boosting their employees subsistence-level wages with tax credits, housing benefit, council tax relief etc

A one off hit on ‘the rich’ is unlikely to deal with the UK spending deficit or the increasing UK debt. And this talk of ‘living within our means’ or being ‘in this together’ seems unconvincing. Nations surf on a sea of debt to maintain ‘growth’.

Anyone know how income tax, NI & VAT revenues compare to corporation tax, capital gains and inheritance tax revenues? How much difference would further tax increases on the ~10% of higher income tax payers (40% or above) make?

And of course there’s the Laffer curve argument already raised

Decades ago it could be foreseen that something of this kind was going to happen. Ever since the nineteenth century our national income, dependent partly on interest from foreign investments, and on assured markets and cheap raw materials in colonial countries, had been extremely precarious. It was certain that, sooner or later, something would go wrong and we should be forced to make our exports balance our imports: and when that happened the British standard of living, including the working-class standard, was bound to fall, at least temporarily. Yet the left-wing parties, even when they were vociferously anti-imperialist, never made these facts clear. On occasion they were ready to admit that the British workers had benefited, to some extent, by the looting of Asia and Africa, but they always allowed it to appear that we could give up our loot and yet in some way contrive to remain prosperous. Quite largely, indeed, the workers were won over to Socialism by being told that they were exploited, whereas the brute truth was that, in world terms, they were exploiters. Now, to all appearances, the point has been reached when the working-class living-standard CANNOT be maintained, let alone raised. Even if we squeeze the rich out of existence, the mass of the people must either consume less or produce more. Or am I exaggerating the mess we are in? I may be, and I should be glad to find myself mistaken. But the point I wish to make is that this question, among people who are faithful to the Left ideology, cannot be genuinely discussed. The lowering of wages and raising of working hours are felt to be inherently anti-Socialist measures, and must therefore be dismissed in advance, whatever the economic situation may be. To suggest that they may be unavoidable is merely to risk being plastered with those labels that we are all terrified of. It is far safer to evade the issue and pretend that we can put everything right by redistributing the existing national income.

George Orwell, 1948

Well, seeing as Hollande’s plan to do very much the same in France seems to be spectacularly backfiring in exactly the same way the ‘right wing loons’ said it would, I’d suggest that Osborne has a point!
http://www.cityam.com/latest-news/french-bankers-escape-hollande

A good argument for taking advantage of the market situation and increasing taxes to 1% below French levels.
Increase market and margin.

If you tax the rich too much they will just bugger off.

Any that want to leave, let them go. Parasites.
Why do so many people peddle this sh*te on behalf the self serving elite?

You should have to work for welfare and not just accept it is your given right to have them.

We pay taxes for the welfare state, so when you need to call on that, it is your given right to receive it.

The welfare bill in this country is massive and that is what needs to be tackled.

This sickens me. Blaming the poor for the state of the nation. It’s like blaming the blood for the wound.

Any that want to leave, let them go. Parasites.

as wrecker notes stop avoidance and make it a crime.
If they leave they can never come back the amoral ****
What zimbo says

welfare for work is very expensive as you need to pay someone like say A4E to administer it and that went well and was cheap to boot 😕

Got one that says what they would have to pay if they did not actively avoid tax Zulu?

A couple of thoughts on this debate. Sorry its a long post:

The tax paid by the bottom 50% of taxpayers 24.1% of the total income tax take in the UK (source is the Office of National Statistics)

The tax paid by the top 5% of tax payers is 45.5% of the total income tax take in the UK (source is the Office of National Statistics)

So if the total tax take was £1,000,000,000

the top 5% would pay £455,000,0000
The bottom 50% would pay $241,000,000

If you even out the tax paid across the sample and then do the maths, it works out roughly as each tax payer in to top 5% already paying 11 times as much tax.

The other problem with raising tax endlessly is it reaches a point of diminishing returns where it becomes more beneficial to pay an accountant to tell you how to avoid tax, which actually drives the tax take down rather than up. A good example of how the tax system in the UK works below

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all
ten comes to £100…

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go
something like this…

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7.
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that’s what they decided to do..

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with
the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to
reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20″. Drinks for the ten men
would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men—the paying customers?

How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his
fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the
sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each
man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the
principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to
work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100%
saving).

The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).

The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).

The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).

The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).

The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four
continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began
to compare their savings.

“I only got a pound out of the £20 saving,” declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got £10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a pound
too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get £10 back,
when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get
anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine
sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to
pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have
enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that is how our tax system works.

The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the
most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may
not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is
somewhat friendlier.

I could be wrong, but shouldn’t we be looking at a different way to get the UK out of recession other than just taxing people more, who are probably on the whole doing a more than most to try and get the economy moving…

Got one that says what they would have to pay if they did not actively avoid tax Zulu?

Like who?

Richard Branson maybe?

That graph is slightly missleading as its only income tax the number the top 1% pay goes down quite fast if it included all the other taxes especially nat insurance, vat etc. Which is another problem IMO why is it all so complicated.

FFS we don’t need to increase tax on anyone, just close the tax evasion/avoidance loopholes so that everyone pays what they should now.

its very rare I agree with wrecker but he’s right you know.

Clegg is an idiot, “one off” anythings are usually the policies of the desparate or idiots IMO, he’s both

That’s a lovely, pointless colour chart.
That said, I might do the bathroom in that 21.8% green.