Andy Burnham should put the damn social care tax on landlords and big occupational pensions

Yes, that's something else that needs to change. More use of tapering would stop that. But of course, someone already paying max pension contributions can't pay in any more, so it doesn't work for those quite a way over £100k.

Aren’t people on 100k already paying far more tax than the rest of us and have already lost a number of benefits? Shouldn’t we be encouraging wage growth, so more people are able to earn great salaries?

we need to end the segregation between how some illnesses are deemed NHS and paid for by the state (cancer) and some are deemed social care and are paid for by the individual or family (Alzheimer’s) Either illness is treated free at the point of need, or it isn’t. At the moment this split causes great hardship.

I agree with this @Witchlite . We pay for care for adults with learning disabilities who will never be able to work, so why is Alzheimer's treated differently? At least many of those who develop Alzheimer's will have worked and paid for other people's care needs during their working lives.

You currently don’t get any benefits at £100k already.

Cliff edges are a bad idea. Plus, your policy rewards dropping hours, turning down promotions, playing it safe. Not exactly what we need to be steering our low growth economy towards.

£101,000 income? No problem. £1,001 pension contribution beats your system.

Means testing ALL benefits at a relatively high threshold would save billions. Set it at something like £100k income (like the personal allowance and free childcare threshold). If someone has income above that, they don't need ANY benefits, whether state pension, PIP, free bus fares, free prescriptions, council tax relief, rent relief or any other benefit, etc. £100k is huge and 95% of people won't be affected as they have incomes under that threshold.

Don't forget premises cost - whether bought/mortgaged or rented - these places are huge and cost a lot!

Plus all the other "on" costs of employment, not just the gross wage, there's employers NIC (Now hiked thanks to Reeves), employer workplace pension contributions, training, paid holidays, paid sick pay. You can very easily add 50% to the gross wage to cover all employer costs of staffing. Then of course, the HR/admin/payroll/management costs which can be another 2/3/4 members of staff for a relatively large care home.

I pay a tiny bit of tax on my state pension, but because they don't seem to have set up a way of deducting it, they deduct it from my occupational pension instead.

My occupational pension went up by a massive £8 a month in April, but I only got to keep £4 of it!

social care like healthcare and all welfare benefits needs to be paid for by the people using it the most. That is almost always people who have never saved or worked. I think we probably do need to go the Scandinavian way and tax benefits / low earners.

24/7 cover including night cover (higher rates) and weekends, building and service costs, food and drink, manager overheads, insurance.

£3.5k a week sounds cheap.

Would you rather inherit the £240k flat (IHT free btw) and for other high earning tax payers stump up the care cost?

The OP's post has to be one of the most economically illiterate I have ever read.
Landlords are already leaving the market in droves because their profit has been reduced by taxes and regulation and the hassle has massively increased. Those who do stay would just put the cost onto the rent.
And so the OP wants to tax pensioners even more. People with 'big' occupational pensions will already be paying 40% or more income tax and their estate may well pay 40% inheritance tax. This is on money worked for and saved over a lifetime. And what counts as 'big? 20k, 30k, 40k? OP - what percentage do you think people should be allowed to keep of their hard earned money? Should the majority go to pay for people who haven't bothered to save? Of course there will be those who need help, but there will be a growing number who just don't bother because 'somebody else' will always pay.
It's good though that Burnham is being brave enough to look at this issue, but OP's idea is not the solution.

Why?

This. £3.5k a week for both my parents. There is no way their care costs that when care workers are on a measly £12-14 per hour. I've not seen a detailed breakdown of how all this money is spent. No doubt a huge chunk will be on utilities fair enough and insurances but still, daylight robbery. Especially when you know that the council have negotiated a cheaper rate for the people they are having to pay for, leaving the total self-funders like my parents subsidising them. And before someone whines about rich boomers they only have a £240k flat to be sold which will all go to the care home.

I favour just not giving out the benefits in the first place.

It would help if HMRC collected the tens of billions of tax lost in the black economy including VAT evasion, "cash in hand" jobs, counterfeit cigarettes and alcohol, money laundering, modern slavery, fake self employment, landlords not declaring rental income nor capital gains, etc. It's a disgrace that for anyone who isn't properly employed by a reputable employer has effectively the "option" whether to pay all their tax or not by simply not declaring everything on their tax return (or not even completing a tax return).

AlI care homes should be council owned and run not for profit.

@PinkFruitbat sure, if we start taxing benefits income too

If you tax the landlords more they’ll raise rents. Much like what has happened in recent years when everyone called for them to be taxed more. Go after those who are renting out property without declaring it.

I've said that on here many times. Have a starting income tax rate of 10% and then increase it in bands to 20/30/40%.

Gordon Brown (for once!) had the right idea when he introduced his 10% starting rate, but for some unfathomable reason, he scrapped it a couple of years later. It was a good thing!

Scrap the personal allowance in full and then anyone with any annual income pays. Seems fair.

My big occupational pension scheme is in crisis. You can find someone to blame for that but blame won't make our pension scheme suddenly richer. You could make me poorer as a pensioner I guess. Good thing I plan to keep working until age 75, anyway.

I'm all for an Estate tax to cover social care, or the 1p that LibDems proposed 30 yrs ago, or the Dementia Tax, making winter fuel allowance means tested, freezing tax thresholds & creating fiscal drag, older people in large homes being gently prised out into smaller more suitable properties: any of that, I have supported them all.

I don't know if a wealth tax is workable, though.
The private rental market provides valuable service, so not sure about taxing them extra. When I was married, we looked into BTL and couldn't see how to make it profitable without betting on property price rises which I disliked as a personal finance strategy.

So good somebody said it - I genuinely think some things should not be private, and I am a 100% supporter of capitalism. Like vital healthcare (not appearance enhancements, unless their need is necessitated by traumatic accidents), Railways infrastructure, Ports infrastructure, and Water and Energy companies, they should be run, paying their staff fabulous wages, with the rest re-invested into the infrastructure. Carehomes should only be state-run. Rich people, obviously, if they want, care hire staff to look after them in their own homes. I say that because when a student, I was renting a bedsit from a truly heartless landlady, who bought a care home as an investment. I am not going to say what she was saying, because it is too distressing, but it was along the lines of 'they don't need much food, half a sandwich at lunchtime that is all they can manage'. She was truly vile and another tenant told me about not not always calling an ambulance for a septic resident, because 'which old dears are on her way out anyway'. This, more than half-a-sandwich, totally stunned me - when a private owner, illiterate, uneducated, without an ounce of humanity, decides who is on the way out or not and does not call an ambulance. Also, the whole concept is 'rip off the maximum amount for care' and 'give as little care as possible' - wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think that seems like a very fair way of doing things then. I’m sure some people would find loopholes (giving money away) but 10% is a level that’s low enough that most people would think it were fair.
I would happily give 20% of my parents joint estate to ensure that all people can receive good care.

That is correct.