The UK has borrowed too much money, has a massive debt - £105 billion goes on paying our debt interest

And yet we feel the need to be responsible for the well being of every person on the planet. I do not feel the need to give aid to any country unless there has been a natural disaster. Our schools are crumbling therefore i do not feel the need to build one in some far flung country. Borrowing to donate is sheer madness.

It’s not a loophole. It’s international tax legislation. The OECD are working hard to fix this but currently Amazon are doing wrong.

what I find REALLY tiresome with comments such as yours is that you assume that HMRC haven’t thought of this, or are in some way happy to let the likes of Amazon off the hook (laughable) and you seem to think this will fix our funding issues. Guess what - it won’t.

The answers to better public services (which I’d love!) is an increase in basic rate income tax and / or VAT. Oh shit, that mean you’d have to pay (and everyone else in the UK). Not so keen on it now are you? Chucking the ‘Amazon’ argument in deflects from the real problem and the real solution to the problem, which is every single person in the UK paying more tax.

Stop whining? WTF? It’s not whining to query the tax payments large international corporations make. It’s not unusual for global businesses to use loophole and tax breaks to siphon money off shore. It was a pertinent question.

Last year Amazon paid corporation tax for first time in years. They had tax credits the previous years of over 100% of infrastructure investment, set up by Sunak. I’m sure they could afford to pay more.

www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/CAN/FRA/DEU/ITA/JPN/GBR/USA

looking at government borrowing also perfectly illustrates what an idiot Liz Truss was. Announce crazy policies, the government looks like it’s being run but a nutter, no one wants to let us borrow as they think the UK might go bankrupt, our interest rate soars as we look uncreditworthy. Cheers Liz!

This is why privatisation is such an abject failure. Any profits that are made with state owned infrastructure go straight back to the Exchequer, when they're privatised they go straight into shareholder profits whilst investment in said infrastructure is virtually nil.

We've been selling stuff for years to balance the books. It's a short term fix in the year it's sold because it makes the books look better. But after that, it gets a little bit shitter year on year.

Britain is unique among Western democracies in that regard.

Pressed too soon. Much as dislike Tory's Hunt was a fat better Chancellor and he did at least have economy on track and understood his actions have consequences.

Is there a chart or list of how much debt other countries have?
I’m wondering what the US debt is like, and other European countries. Also, how do we compare to countries such as Brunei, Cyprus, Saudi, Qatar?

And RR keeps on borrowing more money. Last time to give civil servants an above inflation pay rise. It's very scary. S&P have already downgraded UK creditworthiness since RR Autumn budget. She's also lost her headroom cash by increasing taxes on Non Dom's and now many of these wealthy people have moved to other countries where they pay less tax but still massive amounts of tax, RR did not foresee this in her budget planning so thought she'd squeeze them for far more cash but naively thinking they would not move out of GB. Also taxing businesses more in their NI contribution will cause massive job cuts but RR doesn't care about that either, causing both inflation and unemployment to rise. I wish she'd be sacked only I don't know who else Labour have got who understands economics.

It pays all the tax it is legally due to pay in the UK. Stop whining.

How much tax does Amazon not pay? And others for that matter.

It's not as simple as that though. Because "boosting income" usually costs money and increases debt, and "cutting spending" usually has knock-on effects that reduce income.

Yes ideally we should balance these figures, but sometimes borrowing is the right thing to do.

Despite that eyewatering deficit, if a specific plan would cost an extra £20bn (which we don't have) but would boost income by £40bn per year (woohoo!) then it is sensible to borrow that extra £20bn if we can. What is important is not the size of the deficit but (a) whether our credit rating is good enough that we can still borrow when we want to and (b) whether those with the power are having the good ideas which will lead to growth and higher national income.

And yet they persist with HS2. Classic example of Sunk Cost Fallacy. It will cost at least £150 billiion for very debatable outcomes

Investors are usually pension funds, insurers or other countries.

The UK government issues bonds calls gilts. You can buy a UK gilt and in doing so are entitled to a set interest rate a year as well as repayment at the end of the gilt period. So for instance you could buy a 10 year gilt currently at 4.72%. For 10 years you’d get 4.72% back as interest on whatever you invest and in 10 years time you’d get your money back. If you wanted your money back after 3 years you could sell the gilt to another investor.

UK gilts usually have a fairly low interest rate as the Bank of England has an excellent reputation for repayment.

Look at what happend in Greece or Venezuela for what happens when these debts are defaulted (or threaten to be defaulted). Or what happend to the UK when the debtors just started to lose trust in the UKs financial abilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_United_Kingdom_government_crisis

It’s like living on credit cards, expensive. The problem is every time they try to cut something to balance the books someone starts shouting about it and no one wants to make really unpopular decisions. At the end off day there are people at the other end of all those numbers and they have emotive stories.

a bit like council budgets everyone knows they are overspending but most of that money goes in statutory spending and care packages for elderly and for adults with disabilities and children with disabilities/ sen. Thinking about my own household I pay £2k. Obviously I cost them money too but possibly not £2k maybe there is £500 quid left so to support one elderly person in a care home you need maybe 100 households a year. I don’t think the numbers stack up.

Is the organisation which holds the debt actually putting any pressure on for repayment? (For us and everyone else)

Or is it that, yet again, political parties are putting in "targets"... "no borrowing for day to day costs" is usually there... "reduce the borrowing burden by end of term" ... those sorts of things.

Are there any actual consequences?

What does it matter what sort of debt other countries have? Britain is not as bad as some others but still in pretty dire straights. If you have a massive credit card bill it’s of no help to you if all your friends have a massive credit card bill too. You still have to deal with the massive credit card bill.

This is a large part of why disability payments at the current level are unaffordable and borrowing to give people benefits is the wrong answer. This is what all of those people who think Labour are evil for tackling the soaring benefits bill fail to comprehend. The country is totally economically f’d.