[Closed] Budget - I'm actually better off - blimey!

smoothchicken - Member
If the calculator is to be believed we'll be £923 worse off. What is scary though is that we'll be paying nearly my salary in taxes for us + 3 tiddlers every year, bargain!

Having 3 children is not compulsory.

Apparently we'll be £310 better off.

But then our pension contributions go up in April, and no pay rise for 3 years so far, means that we will actually worse off than we were 3 years ago 🙁

It's all bollox really.

They have lowered the 40% rate threshold, by about a grand

Ah, so they have. But they've increased the allowance by more than that so that seems to explain the benefit i'm getting.

FYI it is 1/4 the benefit that a lower rate tax payer is getting - i.e. still pretty progressive!

Excellent.

Worse. Still happier than if Balls were in charge!

Squeezed middle 🙁 glad I gave up smoking though.
I bet his "promises" to stop tax avoidance amount to FA.

Personally I dont get in a lather over a few hundred quid either way.

If £500 a year was that important to me, I'd have a 30 fags or 3 pints of lager less each week.

As it stands I don't have to, but I doubt some of the 'poor' would take the same approach.

When I was a younger man "the poor" aspired to be better off and worked hard to get it and the benefits that came with it. Those who chose to work in less well paid jobs were not pitied or pandered to. Has this changed?

Wow, we're way better off - unless they backdate the "buying our massive houses through our subsidiary in the Cayman Islands" tax

As I heard it on the radio, they're shafting pensioners in the future and largely breaking even on everyone else ('cept me and my billionaire mates)

Absolute TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR, 500 quid is just a bit of small change - I can't see what all the fuss is about.

Besides, we've got about another 10 years or so of austerity, so they better get used to losing a few hundred quid every budget for a good few more years.

And don't even get me started on the OAPs whingeing on about their so-called 'granny tax'. They're always whining on about something - I suppose they'll also be going on about the NHS now. And after all, they are the ones who have left Britain in such a mess.

As it stands I don't have to, but I doubt some of the 'poor' would take the same approach.

Yup, the so-called poor always want their fags and booze, even though they clearly can't afford it. But you and me could just do without, if we had to - but we don't need to.

The thing that stood out for me in today's budget was that girls/women who are born today will not be able to claim their state pension until they are 80 if life expectancy increases in the same way for the next 80 years as it has for the last 30 years.

Wonderful, eh?

Thankfully the UK birth rate has increased recently otherwise this little island of ours would be overran with doddering old fools expecting money from the government in the form of pensions and other benefits funded by an ever decreasing pool of people of income earning age.

The thing that stood out for me in today's budget was that girls/women who are born today will not be able to claim their state pension until they are 80 if life expectancy increases in the same way for the next 80 years as it has for the last 30 years.

Wonderful, eh?

Don't suppose it really matters if life expectancy increases too. If life expectancy doesn't increase it's a bit of a kick in the nads.

Worse off here, according to BBC calc. I reckon in reality we'll be close to neutral. Have to wait and see what pops up in the detail over the next few days.

I will have almost £3 more to spend each week on what ever I want.....is there a fund where i can donate it to really rich people to help the country out...I want to do my bit for the economy

PS the complete absence of a pay rise for the next few years means that I am off course worse off in real terms

ernie_lynch - Member

Absolute TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR, 500 quid is just a bit of small change - I can't see what all the fuss is about.

Besides, we've got about another 10 years or so of austerity, so they better get used to losing a few hundred quid every budget for a good few more years.

And don't even get me started on the OAPs whingeing on about their so-called 'granny tax'. They're always whining on about something - I suppose they'll also be going on about the NHS now. And after all, they are the ones who have left Britain in such a mess.

As it stands I don't have to, but I doubt some of the 'poor' would take the same approach.

Yup, the so-called poor always want their fags and booze, even though they clearly can't afford it. But you and me could just do without, if we had to - but we don't need to.

Ah, good ol' ernie - thought that one would drag you out.

Note I said 'personally', ergo I was referring to my own personal situation. According to that load of claptrap calculator I'll actually be better off, but as I'm rather well off I'd expect to be.

With regard to the poorer earners, I can't see this budget making the £500 p.a. worse off, can you?

My rather flippant comment was aimed at 'some' sections of society - again note I said 'some', having an opportunity to save £500 p.a. if they needed to. Saying that, I doubt those I'm referring to need to worry about any income tax bands.

I was on the wind-up (sort of) and it obviously worked. I'll get back under my bridge now 😉

is there a fund where i can donate it to really rich people to help the country out

Now there's a man who understands the issues, ie, the "wealth creators" need an incentive ...... more money in other words.

Not that they couldn't manage with less of course, oh no, they would just spend less on fags and booze, just like poor people would if they cared that much about being poor.

But unfortunately that wouldn't be any good for Britain. So for everyone else's sake, the rich need to get a little bit richer.

Can't help you with your dilemma Junkyard, but good for you for fully understanding the correct narrative.

I was on the wind-up (sort of) and it obviously worked.

God I hate wind-ups.

Isn't this fund that transfers money directly from the poor to the rich called a football season ticket.

Best analysis for me is the conclusion from Martin Wolf in the FT tomorrow

"Mr Osborne, like everyone else, is a spectator in an economic sense.The economy will either recover as he hopes in 2013 and 2014 or it will not. His influence on the outcome Is now essentially zero."

I presume from your extensive knowledge of the UK's wealth system and it's associated poverties, that you've personally experienced at least one extreme and varying degrees toward the opposite end of the spectrum ernie?

Absolutely TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR. Some of my best friends are poor, and regularly rub shoulders with some right posh people with loads of dosh. And I also ......

Whoa.....hang on just a god-damn cotton picking minute, this is another wind-up ain't it ? Get back under your bridge mate, I'm not falling for that again.

edited due to poor taste

Night ernie 😉

Whoopdy Doo!!! I'm apparently a whole £252 better off, though of course this is not counting the impact of inflation or fact that shower of shit have already taken away £1200 of my annual income, increased my pension contributions and froze my pay for 2 years.

Someone said it above folks, it's smoke & mirrors.

the top 1% of earners get 17% of the income and own 23% of the nations ealth - and they get the most in tax cuts. what a suprise.

Reminds me of this (borrowed unashamedly from an American site):

Every night, 10 men met at a restaurant for dinner. At the end of the meal, the bill would arrive. They owed $100 for the food that they shared. Every night they lined up in the same order at the till.

The first four men paid nothing at all.

The fifth, grumbling about unfairness of the situation, paid only $1.

The sixth man, feeling very generous, paid $3.

The next three men paid $7, $12 and $18, respectively.

The last man was required to pay the remaining balance, $59. He realized that he was forced to pay for not only his own meal but the unpaid balance left by the first five men, but did not protest.

However, the 10 men were quite settled into their routine when the restaurant threw them into chaos by announcing that it was cutting its prices. Now dinner for the 10 men would only cost $80.

This clearly would not affect the first four men. They still ate for free.

The fifth and sixth men both claimed their piece of the $20 right away.

The fifth decided to forgo his $1 contribution.

The sixth pitched in $2.

The seventh man deducted $2 from his usual payment and paid $5.

The eighth man paid $9.

The ninth man paid $12,

leaving the last man with a bill of $52.

Outside of the restaurant, the men began to compare their individual savings from the $20 reduction,and angry outbursts began to erupt.

The sixth man yelled, "I only got $1 back out of the $20, and he got $7," pointing at the last man.

The fifth man joined in. "Yeah! I only got $1 too. It is unfair that he got seven times more than me."

The seventh man cried, "Why should he get $7 back when I only got $2?"

The nine men formed an outraged mob, surrounding the 10th man. The first four men followed the lead of the others: "We didn't get any of the $20. Where is our share?" The nine angry men carried the 10th man up to the top of a hill and lynched him.

We still have a big issue with tax avoidance in the UK regardless of the Budget. Better to get people who earn enough to avoid taxes paying their fair 45% and keep on raising the basic rate threshold.

We still have a big issue with tax avoidance in the UK regardless of the Budget. Better to get people who earn enough to avoid taxes paying their fair 45%

Well done for completely undermining your own argument by claiming that the wealthy should be paying more taxes and legal loop holes closed.

Just been catching up on the fall-out. He's screwed the pensioners a bit!

What chance the Labour Party will commit to reversing the removal of tax-free allowance for the over-65s?

Well done for completely undermining your own argument by claiming that the wealthy should be paying more taxes and legal loop holes closed.

Don't understand your logic there. That's exactly what I was trying to say - it really doesn't strike me that this Budget has solely been about a redistribution of wealth from rich to poor. The overly-simplified example above shows that any broad tax cut will ALWAYS appear to favour the rich who pay disproportionally more tax.

I earn enough that I pay a decent whack of income tax at 40% but, crucially, not enough to be able to avoid paying any at all, which is what I think was happening with people in the 50% tax bracket. Must be better to have some people paying 45% than no-one paying 50%, which was universally agreed to be damaging to small business and growth anyway?

Well if you don't understand my logic then presumably you don't understand the logic behind the parable either. The purpose of the parable was to make the case for not having excessive taxation on the wealthy. If you had included the last paragraph you would have see that :

[i]"And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for
being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore."[/i]

Seems I'm £562 worse of but I dont think that is right, think I'm a bit better off.

Basically if you work, you're going to be better off. If you are a pensioner earning between £10,500 and £25,000 you will be worse off as they reduce your tax free allowance to bring into line with people in work. Libdems will rightly claim some of the cudos for raising the tax threshold over £9,000, that should have been a core Tory policy too. Lets take it higher, make work pay, maybe exclude the well off from the benefit next time.

We gave pensions and benefits an uptick of 5.2% in Sep when inflation had spiked right up, nothing in the budget for those on benefits on top of that. If like me you think that we shouldnt be spending more on Welfare than we do on education, health and defence COMBINED you wont have a problem with that.

If like me you think that we shouldnt be spending more on Welfare than we do on education, health and defence COMBINED you wont have a problem with that.

Like you, I think that we shouldn't be spending more on welfare than we do on education, health and defence COMBINED.

Unfortunately we still have mass unemployment and a culture of paying piss-poor wages. So I've still got a problem that.

ernie - the version I copied didn't have that paragraph tacked on the bottom. The parable may have been written to make the case for not taxing the wealthy too much but it works equally well in explaining why a broad tax cut can appear unfair.

Just to throw some realism into the debate – the top rate tax payers are paying more than twice as much as the bottom rate tax payers (and anyone earning under 9200 is paying nothing at all). Surely that’s contributing their fair share? Progressive you might say...

I don’t write that as a 50% tax payer either! Tho given my incremental rate of tax is currently ticking along at bang on 60% (40% + 11% NI + 9% student loan) I don’t really feel incentivised to try and become one either!

The parable may have been written to make the case for not taxing the wealthy too much ......

Well probably not the best parable to use to illustrate your belief that the wealthy should be made to pay more in taxes by closing legal tax-avoidance loop holes then ! 😀

Tho given my incremental rate of tax is currently ticking along at bang on 60% (40% + 11% NI + 9% student loan) I don’t really feel incentivised to try and become one either!

If you are in the 40% tax braket then your marginal tax rate is more like 42%. 40% in tax and 2% in NI.

Student loan repayments aren't a tax any more than any other loan.

Student loan repayments aren't a tax any more than any other loan.

Rubbish. It's a tax - comes straight out of the pay packet, I can't change the payment terms or decide them, it was enacted by parliament, and it's for something that used to be free. Seems like a tax to me. You'll be saying NI is to pay for the NHS next.

Politically what matters is whether we have growth in the economy over the next 3yrs. I dont think anyone is going to say 45% is an unreasonable top rate of tax or taking all those people out of income tax at the bottom end was a bad idea if the economy picks up.

Rubbish. It's a tax - comes straight out of the pay packet, I can't change the payment terms or decide them, it was enacted by parliament, and it's for something that used to be free

It wasnt ever free. Its just that someone else used to pay for it.

It wasnt ever free. Its just that someone else used to pay for it.

But you could say that about anything the state pays. The police isn't free but you'd agree it's acceptable for the state to fund it. Education should be the same.

And don't even get me started on the OAPs whingeing on about their so-called 'granny tax'. They're always whining on about something - I suppose they'll also be going on about the NHS now. And after all, they are the ones who have left Britain in such a mess.

Blame pensioners!

And the NHS!

And - erm - oh yes - Labour!

😆

Rubbish. It's a tax - comes straight out of the pay packet, I can't change the payment terms or decide them, it was enacted by parliament, and it's for something that used to be free. Seems like a tax to me.

No, it's money that you borrowed (as did I, I should add) from the government and now you pay have to pay it back. It's a loan like any other where you agree to the terms up front. The fact that it was enacted by parliament and comes out of your pay packet is irrelevant. Once the loan is paid off then you stop paying it. Name another "tax" that is like that?

You'll be saying NI is to pay for the NHS next.

Well it does, in as much as it goes into the government coffers from where the NHS buget is allocated.

Education should be the same.

That sounds like an argument about tuition fees rather than student loans. Loans came in long before fees did.

Supposedly im better off as well, however as we will be paying for our health care (and roads) very shortly i see no reason for joy at present.
Anyone know when we get a chance to vote this party of p****s out?

however as we will be paying for our health care

Where did you get that from ?

instant hit - Member
Supposedly im better off as well, however as we will be paying for our health care (and roads) very shortly i see no reason for joy at present.
Anyone know when we get a chance to vote this party of p****s out?

No, it's money that you borrowed (as did I, I should add) from the government and now you pay have to pay it back. It's a loan like any other where you agree to the terms up front. The fact that it was enacted by parliament and comes out of your pay packet is irrelevant. Once the loan is paid off then you stop paying it. Name another "tax" that is like that?

My point is more that the government should fund this out of general taxation rather than force students to go into debt. As for a tax that is similar - how about VAT - an entirely optional tax. If you don't want to pay it don't buy stuff (and there where would the country be...).

That sounds like an argument about tuition fees rather than student loans. Loans came in long before fees did.

What do you think a lot of people spend their loan on?!

What do you think a lot of people spend their loan on?!

Accomodation, food, and any other general living expenses. Like I said student loans were a fact long before tuition fees were introduced.

My point is more that the government should fund this out of general taxation rather than force students to go into debt

Firstly that's not what you said originally and not the point that I was criticising and secondly I agree completely. It's one of the reasons that I don't begrudge paying a high rate of tax. Your comparison with VAT isn't very good as you are always liable for it when you buy something whereas with a loan, once it is paid off you are a no longer liable.

[i]Sod the poor [/i]
unfair. Gregg's pasties and Lottery scratchcards untouched by the budget.