Clegg wants to hit millions earning over £50,000 with higher tax bills
- Thread starter danielanthony
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Indeed - It causes considerably less hardship to increase the tax take from the richest 10% (the £50k+ earners) than to take it from the poorer people (either through increased taxes or reduced benefits).
I do also think PAYE is the wrong tool though - most of the wealth of very rich people can't be touched by PAYE. This is why I'd prefer a more general wealth tax.
They are having to spend a lot because the economic forecasts predicted were mince.
Bingo!
It's been mentioned on more than one occasion that these statistics are useless without showing them in comparison to percentage of national income.
As an example; if the top 10% of earners pay 53% of tax revenue but receive 53% of the total wage income then it's not as unfair as that graph makes out.
Income groups do not equal total income.
I'm not agreeing with Clegg but I really dislike it when that graph is used to 'prove' that high earners have a rough deal.
Soldato
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it's a difficult one to put any input to. i really like the idea of a higher rate tax to those who earn more, but there already is one. i wouldn't mind if further if it was felt the money earnt would be very clearly shown and how it gets used would be seen too. You get the feeling that this money will go to allow people to live off benefits, when however i may not but without seeing exactly where your money is going it's easy to expect the worst.
Also would people please sotp using ridiculous fancy phrases to sweeten people up like "their hard earnt cash", "this good country". really drives me crazy as it's pointless and distracting.
Also would people please sotp using ridiculous fancy phrases to sweeten people up like "their hard earnt cash", "this good country". really drives me crazy as it's pointless and distracting.
Indeed.
I could steal 99% of the total income in the UK & pay a flat 10% rate & claim I'm a good person because I pay most of the tax.
If anything those graphs just prove gross wage inequality.
I'd actually quite like the poor to pay more tax (but as a result of receiving a greater share of the income) - balance out incomes a bit, then we can balance out taxes.
Soldato
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i thought it was 11% NI and I don't understand why VAT is added as VAT is to the final consumer surely and not the business owner?
A flat tax rate would be so much fairer, and would make working more attractive to those on benefits.
NI rate decreases as income tax rate increases. I don't see where business owners come into income tax?
NI rate decreases as income tax rate increases. I don't see where business owners come into income tax?
Would not a flat rate increase taxes for the lowest earners (making it less attractive to work?).
Unless the flat rate was lower than the current lowest rate (which would leave a huge deficit in public finances).
Soldato
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Then there must be something, perhaps not under your control, that is causing you to feel less than privileged because your wage is well above average.
I don't quite make it to the 50K 'gang' and I feel privileged and live like a king. I pay plenty of tax. Go live for a while on the poverty line where you have to chose between heat and food or food for your kids over yourself. Yes us middle class are privileged.
Anyway, the point of my post was that some people have to share the burden of taxation higher than the others. The less well off shouldn't be the ones that do this, this leaves the higher tax payers. Unfortunately the super rich can avoid paying tax by clever means and thus that leaves the squeezed middle (I'm one!) to take the brunt.
I'd love to hear the OCUK masses solve that riddle...actually I wouldn't because it would mostly be a rant.
Soldato
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No it wouldn't. That just makes the lower paid pay a higher proportion of tax and would discourage work.
Not when personal allowance is increased to compensate, it increases take home for lower paid workers.
So because you manage on your wages I should manage on mine?
Excellent logic, I applaud you
How about you define what the poor are and what the rich are? Clegg didn't maybe a supporter of his policy's can. Until that's answered we could stop using emotive words such as rich and poor. Poor to me is the starving sub-Saharan African, not people living in social housing below the ever moving relative poverty live, no matter how much the social libirators of the Left try to make me.
All this focus on tax avoidance is fluff, avoidance is legal by the very definition. The Lib Dem's want people with assets over £1m to be taxed differntly, so this makes Mr & Mrs Smith who bought thier house in 1989 for £350k now the targets of HRMC. How much they earn is of no relevance in this case shamefully. This asset calculation will now mean more HRMC employment, beuocracy and IT system to go along with it, which then goes back on the promice of simplyfying the tax laws.
What is needed is a bigger effort to stamp out tax evasion, people evading tax are not going to start being honest about assets and incomes with changes in tax avoidance laws, they will just carry on regardless. People will always always set out to lower thier liability, it's common sense, targeting avoidance will just employ more people to find more loopholes and miss out the people evading.
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A flat rate tax including NI would have to be 30% with a ~15k threshold (existing basic take rate) or a higher level with a higher threshold. But I agree in principle, my approx £45k, I would pay (45-15) x 0.3 = 10.5k or £875 pcm tax incl. NI. Overall tax take on £45k = 24%
Taking home more of what you earn in a proportionate way has to be a good thing. I did not say fair as tax is never fair.
Taking home more of what you earn in a proportionate way has to be a good thing. I did not say fair as tax is never fair.
Well said
While that is certainly true that you can't take much from the low paid, what makes you think someone on £50k can afford to give more? What if that person is the only earner in their household while their other half is looking after the children, and they have a mortgage?
Soldato
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Only if the tax savings from those whose tax bill would be lowered are taken away and given to the lower earners to make up their salary to pay the higher rate they'd face.
I've always seen the staggered tax system we have has nothing more to the counter-balance to the unfair distribution in wages we have in this country. If we had a flat rate what's to stop a company paying it's directors 2 million a year each whilst everyone else is on minimum wage? That can happen now under our current tax system but at least when it does some of that mega-pay is taken away and restributed to the lower paid workers via the government.
Take a teacher for example, no matter how hard that teacher works, no matter how much over-time they put in there will always be a glass ceiling to what they can earn because of the nature of their job. On the other hand you can have the son of an oil tycoon who does a lot of hours but virtually nothing productive who earns 50 times what the teacher does.
The point is, whilst we well paid people like to believe they 'deserve' what we earn, the fact is pay is only very loosely based to how much hard work you actually put in and even less linked to how that work benefits the rest of society.
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Nah not a fallacy, working in my industry has some benefits.
I am one of the few who really doesnt mind pay tax, at the current level, I do however hate paying for the class of people you call "poor" they are not poor they are lazy, the pride of this nation has gone from the working class.
When the associated rises in cost of living comes from poor goverment and benefit systems being abused then I do not like the idea of being taxed more for my hard work.
KaHn