Many are only a few unpaid months away from being on the street. Can't pay your mortgage, your on the street. Its a ruthless system, best to bankrupt yourself. So what if some idioits work the system, makes good telly. Immigration, well look after our own first. The pretend middle class and weathly piss me off with their high horse opinions and intolerance for those less fortunate. Arrogant pricks going on about scroungers not paying their way, whilst if they could, would pay less tax etc and pay thousands to accountants to help them pay less. There is greed in this country, its a sickness. Ones happiness expressed through possessions. I'm off my high horse now, the system isn't great but it helps. Chase the wealthy.
Whereas the first thing the Tories did in response to the deficit crisis was to lower the top tax-rate...?! We're 'all in this together'. Of course.
And yet top rate earners still pay a substantial % more of their earnings as tax than lower rate earners. The wonderful thing about percentages is that even if top rate earners paid the same % rate, they would still be paying more tax... After the higher rate 'cut' more tax was collected from higher rate earners as they felt less inclined to resort to 'tax avoidance' measures. HMRC statistics indicate that top tax rate cut has sent income revenue soaring- Money Expert I'm not a higher rate earner but something seems wrong to me with a system that increases the % you have to pay as tax if you earn more, the whole point of paying a percentage of your income as tax is that the more you earn the more you pay! The whole system is screwed, there are people out there who desperately need assistance and are being comprehensively failed, just look at the proliferation of food banks at the moment. And there are people who are playing the system who really do not deserve a penny, i know of one person who claims she is a single parent (despite living with her husband) and uses just about every trick in the book to claim as much as she can, she has 3 horses ffs! The system needs an overhaul, and not a half arsed attempt to play to the media, it needs to properly assess the needs of an individual and give them the help they need. Booze, fags and sky tv are not essentials, a warm dry place to live and food in your belly are! There also needs to be a major crack down on tax dodging from corporations too, the loopholes used by Amazon and the others need to be closed and the companies need to be chased for the tax they owe.
we have neighbours living in a subsidised council house, they have about 7 horses if they can afford a horse they can afford to pay for their own accommodation the fatal flaw with council housing is the tenancy for life, peoples circumstances should be reviewed every 3 - 5 years and the rent reassessed, if their circumstances change then so does their rent and if they are in a position to afford market rentals then their rent should be increased to market rental and then progressively up each year over the market rental to encourage them back into the private sector and free up their house for somebody who really does need assistance.
So the answer would be a flat rate of tax for all taxpayers, with perhaps higher personal allowances to ensure that the lowest paid are spared a tax burden they can ill-afford. That sounds fair. This looks good. The higher paid are not "punished" for being highly paid, and those on low incomes will be better off! That's great. So with a reduced tax burden on the higher-paid and also on the lower-paid, the necessary increase of taxation to make up the shortfall will fall upon the ... middle earners. The ones that are currently just about making ends meet. Yep, that'll work.
No it makes perfect sense that the more you earn the higher % you pay. I actually think it needs to be scaled up. No one makes money purely by themselves and their hard work. Society is what makes people rich, the millions of people who buys your stuff. I actually think there should be a limit to what you can put away, no one should be able to hoard 25 billion pounds on their own. This doesn't mean I don't think people should be able to get rich, there has to be an opportunity just like today to get stinking rich. I just think there should be limits. On your other point I agree, if you don't do anything for society you should be given only food and a safe, warm place to sleep, but anyone who wants to work should have the opportunity to do so and improve from the minimum protection level. More communism to the people! Personally I would therotically be worse off in such a system, but i believe we would all be better off if wealth was spread more evenly across the board,
Indeed - the 'squeezed middle' gets ever more squeezed. It's been generally accepted since the dawn of time that there should be a sliding scale of tax-rates, with higher earners paying more. The question is one of balance. The fact that high-earners 'couldn't be bothered' with their tax avoidance measures once the top rate was dropped is hardly a rational basis for tax planning! Avoiding tax is as much 'playing the system' as those at the bottom claiming everything they legally can. I'm absolutely against all forms abusing the system, but it's interesting that comfortably well-off families 'avoiding' tax is somehow seen as legitimate? If you are lying / misrepresenting your circumstances then you're taking the piss... Whoever you are.
This is one of my bugbears, that Income/Corporation Tax is seen as a game to be played and won (or lost). Government should say to all the "players" that it reserves the right to change the rules, retrospectively, whenever it likes. "Oh, you found a loophole in the current tax legislation? Artificially reduced your tax bill? Congratz! Well, we just closed the loophole, retrospectively, so pay up." Tax isn't a fucking game, it is the health of the nation. Start treating it seriously, Westminster.
The thing is this is an intended part of the system, to entice people/companies who would otherwise not live or work here because of tax reasons to come and live and work here. Loopholes will disappear and new ones will emerge, it's no coincidence or flaw in the model. It's engineered that way.
lets bring back excessive tax rates of 75% or more watch all the money and talent move overseas and the overall tax take and economy nose dive a far better system is to lower taxes, encourage investment and to balance the books by stopping wastage of unnecessary expenditure on social engineering and political correctness
I have a degree of sympathy for this approach. The burden of taxation is so high because of the "no one left behind" social welfare philosophy. However I would rather they completely de-criminalised gun ownership first, in case I need to defend myself in the new utopia. After all, that approach has worked so well in the USA.
Just because something is generally accepted doesn't mean it is fair, or even right. Slavery was once generally accepted as reasonable, it was once generally accepted that women did not deserve the same rights as men... If a person can be bothered to educate and train themselves to do a job then work their way to a high up position where they have responsibility why should they then have to give a higher percentage of their earnings away as tax? I was trying (probably failing) to suggest that a fair system should by definition be fair for all, i.e. nobody unfairly squeezed and everyone paying their way. The point of the drop in higher rate tax earning was not that people couldn't be bothered to pay what they owed, more that it was considered a more reasonable amount, how can anyone consider that giving away half of all of the money you earn is fair? Carrot and the stick, the carrot was that 'if you pay all your tax we will charge you a little less' the stick is 'if you don't pay your tax you will be charged' I completely agree that fiddling is fiddling, whether its lieing to get more benefits, or lieing to reduce the amount of tax you pay they both need to be stamped out.
Lets keep everything for ourselves and fuck everyone else. Doesnt matter than we are disproportionally paid for our services. Look at all the poor people, look how they starve and the despair in their childrens eyes. That's entertainment. Look at us in our big houses an big cars as we waft around driving over the bodies of those we climbed over to get where we are. Lets pay our slaves even less and beat them down even more. I am not fat enough and need more. Some of you lot exist in a Dickensian dream and live in a world even Hogarth would recognise. To care for others is seen here as liberalism. It is not liberalism, it is compassion. It is a fundamental part of ones humanity. If to be compassionate is to be seen as liberalism then I am proud of that. Even though the world tried to beat me down since childhood, ive retained my compassion and humility throughout. All it took for you tossers to lose your humanity was to pay a few quid more in taxes. Take a fucking hard look at yourselves in the mirror.
my own over simplistic though it is,way of thinking/keeping all tax levels real, is that all the money made in this country,stays in this country and is used soley for benefit of the people that actually were born and live in this country. no more just giving it all away,for any reason at all,everything is accounted for and this to be the base of everything in this country. then when a politician whatever wants to go to war,a "donation" account is setup and those that also want to go to war,can then pay up for their beliefs out of their own "stash" and those that dont,simply dont. and the same to be applied to all of these clever political scams/backhanders whatever. no more "dome" scams using the countries money,you want to build a white elephant,you pay for it out of your own pockets,bet you dont go on to sell it for a pound then eh?. also the same to be applied to charities,a lot of whom seem to be funnels for this countries wealth into various backwater nations and never actually acheiving anything except making peole feel better here and a couple of people elsewhere rich. most definately the same to be applied to banks,if people want to use their own money to bail them out its down to them,the countries money stays the countries money...our money. then we could have decent roads,we could look after our sick and elderly,old people could actually have a use administrating it all even. those that refuse from leaving school age or are just tawts that would prefer to be gangster innit,automatically get put into forces and trained and then used by the fuckwits that like war.. those that dont like it can leave... those i dont like can leave n all,that means less tawts,cleaner oxygen and more parking spaces.... heheh
the business world would be using their own money/income to import and also to export. the smaller less connected trades already work like this. the massive conglomorites however dont and they sit outside the country,inputting little and wangling those political backhanders etc in order to be "convinced" to trade in uk,god forbid we should even ask them to pay any taxes into this country.. its openly admitted and is just another funnel eating up our countries resources,they cant play fair then again they are not worthy of our time. like i say too simplistic to work and itll never happen anywhere,all leaders of all nations are basically just very intelligent crooks who care only for themselves. leads over to the human condition thread now. itll never change,only way to become wealthy properly, is to break rules and become a crook.. i see friends that have been to war or worked their entire lives and all they have at the end is the level of life thats beens allowed to them. slavery never went away,it was just renamed. and off for a big fry up n black coffee,thatll cheer me up.. :Hilarious:
actually,i forgot one...running around on a football pitch with your eyes shut and your laces tied together.. thats another way of being extremely wealthy,although only in cash terms,as theres an obvious downside intelligence wise..
I think you'll find that the utopian ideal of genuinely equal opportunity for all hasn't actually materialised... yet. We live in hope! 'Fair' is a very subjective concept. We all want 'fair' but disagree what constitutes fairness. Why are you so obsessed with the magic number of 50%? It seems to just be an emotive trigger for you. IF some hugely clever person or computer could come up with a mathematical model for running the country that suggested that a top rate of 54% would actually produce the 'best overall outcome for all' (however that might be calculated!!) would you still cling to your obsession about the 50% and deem it to be unfair?? And how about acknowledging that we actually get something for our money...? We don't just give it away. It contributes to sustaining all the things we know and love about this country as well as the things that irritate and grate on us.
Indian Chief 'Two Eagles' was asked by a white government official; "You have observed the white man for 90 years. You've seen his wars and his technological advances. You've seen his progress, and the damage he's done." The Chief nodded in agreement. The official continued; "Considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?" The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute and then calmly replied.. "When white man find land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water. Women did all the work, Medicine Man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; all night having sex." Then the chief leaned back and smiled; "Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that."
