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I'm with the OP on this one what's fair about one person earning 50-60k getting taxed on child benefit yet 2 couples earning 2x49k not getting taxed?
Eh? Are we in a parallel world now where the new definition of [b]'tax' [/b]is 'the government don't give me free money'?
[quote=stumpyjon ]The tax system is ridiculously organised, the whole thing about it being easier to administer on higher rate earners was rubbish, they were quite capable of assessing both incomes for tax credits.
Yeah, because that the tax credit system is universally acknowledged to be well administered and lacking in expensive bureaucracy.
Thats right. I sometimes do wish I had sufficient moral fibre to realise that I am superior to those who pay less tax than me.
How much tax do you pay?
Dont know
How much tax do you pay?
I wish I didn't.
I don't
Whats the threshold for 40% income tax?
I'll swap jobs with you gladly
Who me? Plenty of jobs for science teachers going if you want one. I like mine I'll keep it thanks.
So if I earn 20k I can be bitter and twisted about people who pay more tax into the system?
Wow. Ok- think of those poor teachers etc.
Madness. Someone on 20k only pays tax on 10k(?) Of that. Factor in two kids, credits etc then really that bitter person is costing the likes of the OP.
On 50k how much is tax?
BTW I don't earn (earn being the right word as he's not given it for free) any near the OPs wage. I just hate inverted snobbery on stw sometimes.
[quote=hora ]So if I earn 20k I can be bitter and twisted about people who pay more tax into the system?
Well it seems if you earn £50k you can be bitter and twisted about people who earn £90k and get child benefits (but still pay more into the system than you), so fill your boots.
Anagallis- sorry I meant the op
Could you try that again hora your point is lost on md
Great thread - especially equating responsible savings via pensions (the most sensible way to save) with benefit cheating.....
Anagallis- sorry I meant the op
You dissin my job!!!!
I did a university course entitled "the British tax system" many many moons ago. The detail it went into generally proved that the starting point "to be fair a tax system must be progressive and related to the ability to pay" was never respected. And that in the real world lower income earners pay a high proportion of their income in tax. Those that pay the lowest proportion of their income in tax are the wealthy who have high unearned incomes.
When I was in business in France I paid 52% of my earned income in tax and obligatory social security payments. On my unearned investment income I used perfectly legal strategies to pay almost no tax just using French investments in France. Things have changes a little but it's still earned income that is most taxed.
When the poor spend their money they spend more of it on things that are highly taxed than the rich. They use transport to get to work which if they use a car means paying for one of the most taxed goods/services there is. They need to dress, communicate... all high VAT gods and services. Live somewhere? You pay more tax per m2 on small properties.
The whole system serves to keep the poor poor and help the rich get richer. The solution is a more progressive tax system but that is very hard to apply as the wealthy are the most mobile. There's always some financial rogue state to welcome them.
So what can we do? Vote of course, and probably further left than you think you should. And use what little economic power you have wisely. Never visit Switzerland or buy anything Swiss for example.
I think teaching is an admirable job, I doubt I'd have the patience for it
How progressive do you want it to be? When did you adjust your tax behaviour Edukator? .
If you can't afford children don't have them. Having children is a choice. It annoys me that people make that choice expecting others to foot the bill.
Those that pay the lowest proportion of their income in tax are the wealthy who have high unearned incomes.
I guess that would probably include the director of a chain of retail stores that chooses to defer taking money out of the business in anticipation of future renumeration through dividends at a reduced tax rate, rather than choosing to receive a wage from the company/shops they own?
If you can't afford children don't have them. Having children is a choice. It annoys me that people make that choice expecting others to foot the bill.
If you can't afford a bike to cycle to work on, don't buy one. Buying a commuting bike is a choice. It annoys me that people make that choice expecting others to foot the bill through bike to work schemes.
Done it myself Ninfan. When I was in business there was a tax reduction on profits reinvested in the capital of the business (this benefits society in general as it makes businesses more resistant to hard times and reduces the number going bankrupt at the first minor downturn). If you closed the business within three years you had to pay the reduction to the tax man, after that it was simply the capital of the business owned by the shareholders (us) with no more tax to pay if the business was sold or closed allowing the owners to recover their capital.
Wasn't cycle to work scheme a Labour invention?
We can only afford to have one child. If I dropped salary drastically and played the numbers I could have a second. Quid's in!
If I'd adjusted my behaviour because of tax I wouldn't have chosen to live in the most taxed part of a town in the most taxed country (I think) in Europe, teamhurtmore. Paying taxes is just part of being a (good) citizen. I make informed choices and wouldn't knowingly pay more tax than necessary.
I don't go out of my way to avoid tax either or get upset about paying it, I just try to understand the system and play within the rules. Sometimes the government wants us to do things that are in the general interest and uses the tax system to create an incentive. I've benefited from tax incentives to produce renewable energy and drive a less polluting car. Sometimes I ignore an incentive; in France it's a financial disaster if you only have one child but having two or three (bingo!) is much easier. Some people have three to get all the extra benefits and earlier retirement but we just wanted one.
The Tax System - Explained With Beer
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. '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 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 realized 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 roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay £5 instead of £7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 ( 25% savings).
The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a pound out of the £20,' 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 than I!' 'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get £10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!' 'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The 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 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, 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 anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Class
The old ones are the old ones. Though in this case it's the 9th bloke whinging about the 8th and 7th bloke saving more than him between them.
And Connect2 sums it up very succintly. In fact only the top 30% or so contribute to the state, everyone else is a net recipient and based on the trends in the article below the net contributors are getting less, not sustainable long term. No wonder those EARNING the higher incomes feel ever more pissed off with the prejudice aimed at them from there very people they are helping to support.
But there are solutions:
Like the Americans make people pay the difference to what they pay overseas and what they would pay in the US if they want to keep their citizenship.
Create a wealth tax like France's ISF which applies to all assets.
Remove the discrimination between types of investments. Money under your control is your money and taxable however it's dressed up. "Trusts" are mainly used by the untrustworthy.
Make tax evasion at least as serious a crime as shop lifting. With a simple principal. The least you risk if you hide money from the tax man is the tax man taking all of it.
A property super tax. Property is one form of asset that can't be hidden or moved. The tax would be a progressive tax payable from the third property owned (fourth for a couple) and on any property not owned by a UK tax payer. Property owned abroad would be included for individuals. Tax on property held by companies/charities/associations rather than individuals would be paid by shareholders/members. Agricultural land tax would also be payable by companies/farmers owning more than 150 hectars.
Edukator
all good points, hit the super rich not keep hammeringly the moderately well off who earn their income.
I want schools to be open 330 days a year. Thus allowing hard pressed workers the ability to work and not pay out childcare cots etc.
Teachers have it too easy.
The super rich elite must love the sentiment from most on this thread - the middle fear the poor and think they're scrounged, whilst the poor envy the middle and resent them having money. Meanwhile the elite continue to get richer without ever giving their fair share.
our house hold income is under 17K and we need the money from the government to survive I think the current system is totally stupid. It should be a household threshold not an individual limit. They should lower it to 30k for a house hold
I think a more relevant example of the inequality of the CB system would be myself and a lady I used to work with.At the time the caps came in, she earned 30k, and her husband earned 25k. I earned roughly the same, but as a sole earner.
We both had similar mortgages, live in a similar areas, had two kids of the same age in school. In fact, to all intents and purposes, the same circumstances.
I had to take a £1200 pay cut.
Anyone here fancy a £1200 pay cut? No, didn't think so.
I never moan about not getting it, because I agree, when you have incomes in this range, you don't really need it. But it should be equally applied on family income, not the sole highest income. I believe the reason it isn't done like this, is that the costs of recovery and assessing the entitlement on joint incomes would exceed the amount saved by not paying it, so that's why it's not done.
Not knowing the whole circumstances, but initially, you would've had to pay mroe tax and them more council tax, so the tax/ni/pen almost levels out. If both parents in the opposing house were working, they would've needed additional childcare (breakfast/afterschool club) whereas you (I'm assuming you're not raising the kids alone) do not. £1700 worth of CB will barely make a dent in that cost.
There's a sound reason why these rules exist, but admittedly at the £90k value, it does become a little difficult to justify.
We can only afford to have one child. If I dropped salary drastically and played the numbers I could have a second. Quid's in!
Can you show me your working out on that?
the poor envy the middle and resent them having money
Is that what you're getting from this?
I'm not seeing it.. I guess there are some bitter people in all walks of life but I'm happy as a pig in shit with the simple life.. part of being poor your whole life is you learn to see the futility of wasting your life chasing money..
You learn that it's really [i]really[/i] not all about that..
I pity the grasping middle, and to be honest I'm probably a bit disgusted... Envious though?
pull the other one mate 😆
I love the way we seem to have forgotten the value of a progressive taxation system... Thanks to wonderful spin and propaganda we have the chattering classes bemoaning 'benefit scroungers', lower earners despising the 'squeezed middle' and the super rich laughing all the way to the bank. Divide and rule, divide & rule.
The level of taxation on a gross salary of £50k means that it doesn't represent as big an increase of a £30k gross salary as is often imagined. Also a family earning £50k jointly pays far less tax than a family with a single £50k salary. That doesn't seem fair to me, before we talk about benefits of any type.
Out of interest yunki, if you don't mind - what does your simple life consist of?
Genuinely curious, as sometimes I'd love to throw away the constraints of 50+ hr weeks away from home, chasing decent earnings.
poah said:
[i]our house hold income is under 17K and we need the money from the government to survive I think the current system is totally stupid. It should be a household threshold not an individual limit. They should lower it to 30k for a house hold [/i]
The only way I could see you been able to live on £17k is if there is only one of you (in an expensive area) or two folk in a cheap area and/or you've no rent/mortgage.
And as that is less than minimum wage for two people, does that mean you don't work a full week each?
The thresholds are not very well thought out but your scraping the barrel of first world problems to moan about it.
Paying more money into a pension is a good way of bringing back under £50k if you can. Otherwise with two kids you would have an effective tax rate of 58% (40% income tax, plus 18p for every pound earned lost in child benefit) on any earnings between 50 and 60k.
Its an ill conceived policy, bringing up kids costs money and the child benefit is a good way of giving a help to ALL parents.
I would happily see introduced (and pay) and higher rate of income tax and dedicate that "extra" to schools and the NHS.
There are clearly some bitter folk on here who think that those earning lots are selfish money grabbing eejits. Those on £30-60k make up a huge part of the income tax collection and I think that's fair, but if I was on 50-60k with two kids then I would feel I was paying too much into the system and getting too little back. Happily I am not affected by this policy.
[quote=poah ]our house hold income is under 17K and we need the money from the government to survive I think the current system is totally stupid. It should be a household threshold not an individual limit. They should lower it to 30k for a house hold
Is that because you're envious, or do you think there is some advantage to you if somebody else doesn't get something?
[quote=CHB ]if I was on 50-60k with two kids then I would feel I was paying too much into the system and getting too little back.
Maybe higher rate taxpayers should get to jump the queue for an operation, so that they get something back for all that tax they pay. I'm sure all those benefit scroungers and pensioners can wait a bit longer.
aracer...they do don't they? Its called medical insurance.
[i]aracer...they do don't they? Its called medical insurance. [/i]
Have you actually looked at the cost of medical insurance - that actually works?
Pretty hard to afford it on £50k if you've a family and the like - only time I had it was when the company I worked for offered it (and just paid the BIK).