Japan manages all the same services at a fraction of the cost per person and with much better results .... while having a lower GDP per capita than UK (despite having a lot of "innovation" occurring there)
Why is VAT accepted?
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Japan manages all the same services at a fraction of the cost per person and with much better results .... while having a lower GDP per capita than UK (despite having a lot of "innovation" occurring there)
daz, and yet USA pay LESS tax overall per capita - and A LOT less PERSONAL tax per person than UK (they make up the numbers by having a higher corporate tax rate)
I say they get better value for money than us seeing as they have a lot of defence and scientific R&D funding from the government, almost no tax on fuel and very little sales tax.
This is despite USA having to import almost all of it's petrol while UK is able to use Brent and make our own.
I say they get better value for money than us seeing as they have a lot of defence and scientific R&D funding from the government, almost no tax on fuel and very little sales tax.
This is despite USA having to import almost all of it's petrol while UK is able to use Brent and make our own.
Soldato
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Personally I kinda agree with what is being said by the OP, but understand the need for taxes. My personal preference would be to scrap all the multiple double taxes, and charge a higher, sliding scale income tax, that way you'd at least know when your taxes were paid.
Now I'm not a financial minister and don't know how much a raise we would need, but given how much tax we pay on this and that, as an example, if they raised income taxes from 15%->30%, but we then didn't get taxed again on our money, I think it'd be a preferable system; people would know when they'd been taxed and what the tax was (and what was thier money), and the government would have a larger amount of instant tax each month, rather than spread as transactions are made.
Might sound mad but if you think about it, Im sure you can see what I'm getting at, rather than multiple taxes and double taxes, one unified income tax.
Now I'm not a financial minister and don't know how much a raise we would need, but given how much tax we pay on this and that, as an example, if they raised income taxes from 15%->30%, but we then didn't get taxed again on our money, I think it'd be a preferable system; people would know when they'd been taxed and what the tax was (and what was thier money), and the government would have a larger amount of instant tax each month, rather than spread as transactions are made.
Might sound mad but if you think about it, Im sure you can see what I'm getting at, rather than multiple taxes and double taxes, one unified income tax.
My opinion is that i dont mind taxes at all, I would love not to have them but i accept the reasons why we need taxes. My only problem with taxes is that i dont agree with how they are used, if less tax money was wasted and more used to improve the UK then it would be great, but the current state of the UK doesnt ballance with what we pay in taxes IMO.
No matter who becomes prime minister, there will never be enough changes to tax spending to justify the current level of taxes. So either taxes need to be reduced, or spending has to be corrected to account for the taxes. I wouldnt even mind a small tax rise if it meant taxes could be spent where they are needed.
No matter who becomes prime minister, there will never be enough changes to tax spending to justify the current level of taxes. So either taxes need to be reduced, or spending has to be corrected to account for the taxes. I wouldnt even mind a small tax rise if it meant taxes could be spent where they are needed.
Man of Honour
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Who's in your top 10?We pay too much tax, for too little and poor services...
Put it this way, I would not put UK in top 10 for value for money
I've been to 10 other countries and would only rate some of them better than the UK, and many a lot worse.
Possibly top is the Bahamas - tax haven, ideal lifestyle, don't know what else a man could want
Why should a rich man pay more VAT on an item as a poorer person?
If we lowered VAT to say a random figure (lets use your random 5 as an example) where would we get all the lost revenue from?
We have a health service to pay for, the Americans don't.
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We pay too much tax, for too little and poor services...
Put it this way, I would not put UK in top 10 for value for money
Then move elsewhere and save us from your whinging and ridiculous posts - such as the gross generalisations regarding benefits "only claimed by chavs".
Where did you dream that up???
So the Exxon Valdez was taking oil to Alaska?
The financial benchmark of West Texas Crude is what folk in Texas pay for oil?
Hundreds of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are there for decoration?
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We pay too much tax, for too little and poor services...
Put it this way, I would not put UK in top 10 for value for money
How many other countries have you lived in?
in terms of proportion of their wages a poor person puts more back into the economy than a rich person, who travels abroad more, buys more overseas, saves more etc
Texan and Californian (and Gulf of Mexico as well I think) oil is not very good for Petroleum production (unlike oil from Canada, UK, Venezuela, and Middle East.
This is why US imports more than 2/3 of their oil (here and here).
Brent Crude however is pretty good for Petrol production, and we do not require as much fuel as USA (so we can meet our demand).
does it?
You only have decent healthcare should you have a job. If you are out of work and ill you might as well live in 3rd World for all the help you'll get.
does it?
You only have decent healthcare should you have a job. If you are out of work and ill you might as well live in 3rd World for all the help you'll get.
As mentioned before, NHS costs about $200bn a year - like for like (if we equate US spending down to UK population size) US spends more than that EXTRA on their defence and R&D budget ... meaning that we were to spend the same as we are spending currently on defence, but adopt the rest of the US tax system we would have enough money to spend on NHS.
US spends $600bn on defence for a population that is 300mil, UK spend 60bn for a population about 60mil. Meaning that just on defence they spend 60bn extra given a like for like population.
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Hi everyone i got my speakers about an hour ago and they still work
I thought I'd pick you up on this. £40bn (or whatever the amount) spent on benefits always ends up back in the economy, and large proportion very quickly back to the government. People on benefits don't tend to horde their money away, nor do they take advantage of offshore tax havens. They are spending their money on food, bills, cigarettes, alcohol, DVDs, plasma TVs - thus the money will eventually end up in the hands of retailers, and then the government by way of corporation tax, VAT, NI contributions, etc.
To suddenly withdraw that amount of money from the British economy and give everyone in the UK, say, a 5% income tax break or a large break on VAT would severely mess up the economy.
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Odd that with WTI (West Texas Intermediate) being a light sweet crude, typically around 0.24% sulfur and lighter and sweeter than Brent makes it ideal for Gasoline refining, lower sulfur content crudes (such as the WTI) contain a dispoportionately large amount of the fractions used to refine Gasoline, Diesel and Kero, the split actually produced is largely due to refining economics rather than the crude used, you can optimise the fractions but not dictate them hence we are an exporter of gasoline due to domestic diesel demand being higher and the US due to minimal diesel demand is an importer of Gasoline
also tends to trade at a premium of $1-$2 to Brent highlighting the higher value for based on the type of crude