AIBU to refuse extra hours when most of the pay goes in tax?

Same in most professions really, not just the NHS. You also have to add in that in a lot of professions, the more senior staff are often WFH at least part of the week, so they're not in the office to help train the younger/trainee staff, meaning it takes longer for the new recruits to hit the ground running and get up to speed for the "bread and butter" work and even longer to gain the years of experience needed to be able to take on the harder/complex work. It's a massive problem and just getting worse. Firms/organisations are going to really have to re think their entire recruitment/training/remuneration procedures to ensure that they have enough senior staff in the future. Even moreso with so many firms saying they're recruiting fewer trainees/graduates due to AI as they don't need as many "bums on seats" to do the lower level drudgery work. You really have to wonder just where the next generation of managers/seniors/consultants in professional firms are going to come from!

The problem is when people go part time due to tax - what actually gets cut from your free hours that you already do for whatever institution you work for - is upskilling/supervising the next generation. Which is precisely what this country needs the most. And hence it is a massive problem in the NHS for example, because unless you have enough supervision hours, you cannot train enough new doctors.

Although in principle it would be great to job share, the reality is as others say that there aren’t enough people to do some of the jobs. I had to fight to get part time to reduce hours by half a day a week. And I haven’t had maternity cover for either job, as it wasn’t possible to get someone in and approved to the level where they could do the job.

I understand from my friends in corporate law, finance and medicine that it’s similar. And don’t worry, we are working more than full time hours even on slightly part time, whoever was worried about job loyalty. They make sure they get their hours don’t you worry! But why would we take on more responsibility and more (unpaid) hours and more stress to get so much taxed

“Over the coming two decades, rising pressures from ageing, defense, and the climate transition will require difficult choices to contain spending growth in a context of constrained revenue-raising capacity. These pressures could raise public spending by about 6 percent of GDP by 2050. Beyond the planned tax ratio increase until 2030, staff analysis suggests that the long-term scope for further revenue increases is becoming limited unless more fundamental tax reforms are envisaged. Thus, the scale of rising spending pressures and limited tax space imply that a growing share of the adjustment will likely need to come from expenditure restraint in the longer term. Deeper expenditure reforms could, for example, entail replacing the triple lock with a policy of indexing the state pension to the cost of living, improving the targeting of social benefits, as well as focusing more on preventative care, and expanding charges in the health system while protecting the vulnerable. A transparent public debate would facilitate a better understanding of the trade-offs, clarify policy priorities, and support durable reforms.”

Three areas are particularly important to boost productivity:

• Improving labor mobility. The UK's productivity problem reflects pronounced spatial disparities, with workers unable to easily move to high-productivity locations, in part due to housing costs. The Planning and Infrastructure Act, changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, the release of grey-belt land, and mandatory housing targets are all steps in the right direction. However, construction activity remains weak, underscoring the need to track implementation closely and assess whether weak outcomes reflect policy lags, design gaps, or other frictions.
• Addressing skills gaps. The UK workforce suffers from significant and long-standing skills gaps. While the authorities’ skills agenda has the right institutional architecture with Skills England, the Growth and Skills Levy, and the Temporary Shortage List—it is operating against a backdrop of a deteriorating tertiary education funding model, decades of underinvestment, and migration restrictions that are further tightening availability of skilled labor. This calls for a significant enhancement of the pace and ambition of domestic upskilling, with a focus on younger people.
• Deepening financing for innovation. A central weakness in the UK innovation ecosystem is that many high‑growth, innovation‑intensive firms struggle to secure sufficient long‑term risk capital. This reflects a lack of scale-up financing, institutional portfolios that are insufficiently oriented toward productive investment, and constrained financing for investment in intangibles. The authorities' measures—including pension fund consolidation, listing and market changes, and the expanded role of public finance institutions to catalyze private investment—target the right frictions, and could be complemented by consolidating these institutions without material disruption to their investment activity to reduce fragmentation and eventually increase the scale of their financing operations.

I mean I guess, what does the IMF know when we have such experts in charge leading the narrative!

Badbunny, I agree with you but unfortunately the government (previous ones as well as this one) either doesn't care or doesn't see a problem. The £100 k cliff edge means that loads of people put a lot of money into their pensions. They hit their late 50s, see some contemporaries become ill/drop dead and especially if they have a stressful responsible job think sod this, I'm getting out now.

My DH is like this. He's waiting until DD finishes Uni and he's 60 and then he's finishing. He's well paid but hates his job and all the politics. He and a lot of the people at his level keep hoping they'll be offered a protected conversation but there aren't the people with experience coming through to take their places so the company doesn't want to let them go!

Except when there aren't the trained/qualified/experienced people to do the work. You assume an infinite supply of workers.

That's not the case. Look at the well known shortage of dentists and doctors leading to long waiting lists and delayed treatments.

Likewise shortage of other professionals such as qualified/experienced engineers, actuaries, etc.

It costs money to educate/train people for the senior professional roles and can take years, if not a decade or two, for the likes of medical consultants. We need people like that to work as much as possible and not "encourage" them to reduce their hours/days by a dysfunctional tax/benefits system.

I've been talking recently to three accountancy practices as I'm retiring and wanting to sell my practice in the next 2/3 years. All three are really struggling with getting qualified/experience accountants recruited, and are advertising widely/using recruitment agencies, and offering a decent remuneration package, but the only applicants aren't the level they need. They all say the same - the 40/50 year old staff are going down to part time by knocking 1 or 2 days off, the 60+ year olds are retiring or going down to just 1 day, and in the middle of all that, they're having to cover maternity leave as accountancy has become a popular profession for women. All three firms want to buy my business but all three want me to work for them rather than retire - they've the staff to do the menial/lower level work, but don't have the "top end" staff so independently they're all offering me the same "package" of me going in to do high level work and "attracting" me by taking off my "low level" clients. If I'd have realised what was on offer, I'd have moved over and done it years ago!!

Oh do give over with this ridiculous slave talk. I have great respect for doctors, have frequently said it's not a job I'd want to do, I don't have the stamina for the hours and would hate my mistakes to be life or death.

I would support you in wanting better pay and conditions. It's criminal how the NHS has been destroyed over the years.

Just drop the slave bit. It's not true, you could switch to another lower earning less stressful job if you wanted to.

Yeah but there’s hard work and there’s skilled hard work.

sorry, but literally anyone can clean, sweep the streets, stock the shelves, be “security” at Tesco. And I genuinely don’t mean to offend. But there’s a limited number of people who can carry out surgical procedures, transplant organs, oversee complex chemo/radiotherapy, clip a brain aneurysm etc.

So it’s not so much about hard work, it’s more about the number of people who can carry out such work, and the risk associated with it.

Just want to tax us into oblivion to pay for the queer/non-binary/avoidant/“new Scots”, wastes of space. I’m embarrassed now 😡

Yes, because I would put it into my pension and pay no tax on it (right now).

I think that if you can earn a pretty good salary on part time hours then it is best to stay on part time hours. Better for you and your family and the more people who do it the more high earning jobs there will be. Yes, less tax but ultimately more employed people.

Another one here working out how to avoid paying tax. I earn £60k full time. So £8k is taxed at 40% and at £57k my employer raises pension contribution to 7.5% instead of 5.2% (doesn’t affect final pension).
So I am going to 0.8 of full time (4 days). I’ll lose significantly less than the 20% you’d expect.

As a £40k earner I made a lot of sacrifices to make sure the job got done it’s not reserved to £100k earners

And clearly you have no idea how much many “higher” earners work either! How much responsibility they have, how many hours they work over many many years etc and what sacrifices they make to hand over 60% of their salary.

A “slightly” higher salary - ha!

You have no idea how hard many low earners work

And @JumpingPumpkin - I think it is really insulting to not acknowledge that plenty of medics (who are “high” earners on paper) completely burnt out during Covid and have had to endure more of the same since. Which is a very stressful working environment, increased tax burden, impossible demands.

There really is a breaking point for many humans and getting a slightly higher salary and then asked to hand over 60% plus is THE breaking point for many. Same applies to many lawyers in the criminal justice system - or why do you think the judicial system is on its knees/so slow etc now? Same with the NHS. There is a reason for it.

@JumpingPumpkin - I already stepped off a few years ago after being a slave from the age of 22 until 41. I had to, it is called burn out and is very real, for many people. When you are in it, you often suffer from Stockholm syndrome.
I do now work part time and I could go back and earn more and go back to 120% again - but the disincentive in the tax system is there. I thought I would go back as my youngest started year 7 in September, but I won’t now. There is no financial incentive to do it.

Many of my colleagues did the 16 hour days until their early 50s, sometimes mid 50s. Mostly they literally have to stop due to health reasons. Often have to take a couple of years out entirely just to recover. Some then do go back to part time work or volunteer. But it is very rare for anyone to survive until their mid 60s.

Oh, so not like a slave at all then.

It's unbelievably insulting for high earners to complain about 'having' to retire early. I assume you think low earners work hard or have stressful lives?

You could step off the hamster wheel and get a less stressful lower paid job.

It's genuinely crazy how people who are better off somehow don't realise it.

Yes I can see this. My public sector workplace got taken over by a 3rd party private supplier that does not value experience and knowledge. It is easier for them if you don’t point out the things that might go wrong, or are going wrong, so to get along you just smile and nod. They think anyone can do the job, and better if people just follow the process and don’t point out the risks and flaws. Customers and staff are numbers not real people. Tick box culture. I suspect this is part of the problem with productivity in the UK. Maybe I’m just getting old but can’t wait to retire and get out of it - I never used to feel like this!

I’m in the higher tax bracket and happy to pay. I also do overtime and know that half of that will go to the tax man. But I need to make up some money for my annual train fare and contribute to my DD’s university living expenses, as well as pay for various other debts, so I have to do it.

If your workplace has a reorganisation and no longer needs you they will drop you like a stone. Family first. Your job does not care about you.

”Did you have little formal education and were unable to get a job with good employment conditions”

No @JumpingPumpkin - the opposite. Grammar school education mainly and elite uni and preprogrammed to join the hamster wheel from infancy. Probably much like a lot of doctors.
The point is work no longer pays for the sacrifices people are asked to make. Spending is going to be on pension health and social care and public services for the young and the working are deteriorating, whilst their tax burden is increasing.
It does not even “pay” to put a lot of money into a pension anymore because if you drop dead early due to a stressful job, the taxman now takes a lot of it via inheritance tax too (new changes).

Hence the natural conclusion for many is to step off the hamster wheel. And a lot of people will be retiring earlier than planned because of said changes to pension rules too. They are simply burnt out working for others.
The majority of people who do high paid jobs work really hard and are under immense stress and pressure and responsibility that is never left behind until they retire early.

That sounds horrific. I'm really sad that you felt you had no other choice. It must be really unpleasant to have no control over your life like that. Did you have little formal education and were unable to get a job with good employment conditions?

So which services do you want to cut even further as an alternative to more tax

Adult/children’s social care?
education? Higher tuition fees for uni?
NHS - emergency care? Other?
Highways? Potholes?
Defense?
Police and Criminal Justice System?
State Pension (which keeps going up as more pensioners and triple lock)
Benefits? Which benefits?
Fire brigade?
Waste Collection?

I don’t think people would accept higher taxes for better public services because working people are already paying a lot if tax. Additionally many are funding their own services eg private healthcare, private dental, private school so they aren’t using some services at all.

Working people rightly expect a certain standard of living for going to work everyday, putting their children in childcare, paying for private services. They are taxed enough, society isn’t working, changes need to be made. The answer is not to just tax people more.