the TUC says the public won't stomach the cuts because they are regressive, unfair and let the rich off the hook

The thing that riles me so much about this debate is whenever cuts are mentioned it is frontline services that the bureactrats and bosses cut. They never cut their own job or pay.

This is the big trap the Coaliton are going to fall into. They will allow 'the opposition in waiting' now sititng in Town Halls, top of Quangoes, Local health Autorities, the Education sector to decide where the cuts fall. Guess what, they will put the cuts? Where it makes the most public impact and blame the Coalition meanwhile preserving their own nice job/income ready for when they hope to slip into a nice job when Labour gets back into power.

This is why senior people need to be sacked first - to stop them delaying and obfuscating the cuts. An entire layer of local Govt removed. I would shut all the old Poly universities too as well as half of all Govt departments. A shock and awe attack on bureacracy yes but not front line cuts.

Indeed.
I was in Zug earlier this year for work. Plenty of people have moved there. Better skiing in the UK and very low tax rates. Lots of high earners are mobile. If tax got too bad I would consider moving. Work is fun but if in one country 60% of your income simply goes back to the poor ( like the man in teh NE in today's paper who has 12 children by 10 women and h'e 24 and they will cost about £2m as virtualyl all the women are on benefits) then I'd rather work in another country where I can keep more of it.

I am not critising closing tax loopholes; I am just saying that it is difficult to predict how much you will raise by doing so.

Hmmm...hope Danny Alexander et al understand that trying to close 7bn of loopholes ususally results in much less than 7bn of revenue....depends on what loopsholes but capital can move in expectation of closed loophole... SO spending 900bn could lead to say 1bn extra revenue...hmmm

£7bn a year, that should be.

Anyway - Danny Alexander has just announced the government plans to invest £900m in closing £7bn worth of tax loopholes and evasion, especially the use of offshore devices.

Quattrocento - i agree, I suffered about 50pc cut in earnings between 2008 and 2009 and at one point wasn't earning anything. I am on the centre left but I feel that we need to acknowledge that our Services (Financial, Legal etc) does earn us income by sucking in global cash....the French and the Canadians would love us to tax ourselves into an uncompetitive position....develop other industries but remember how much money the govt made from tax Fin Services...and they are nicely set to make a huge sum from rescuing RBS and Lloyds!! The share price is already "in the money"

True. The private sector has already been subject to the extra taxes. many are on 4 day weeks they can ill afford if they have kept their jobs at all. The public sector is now starting to be subject to similar issues but the others were hit first.

I find all this genuinely puzzling

The highest earners had a massive increase in income tax. They were hit hardest and hit first, those who hadn't already lost their jobs. My firm saw a 25% reduction in headcount, I'm having to work significantly harder and my tax bill has gone up by £10k.

The public sector, which was vastly overinflated, has been largely insulated from cuts so far, but the cuts do have to happen.

So I genuinely don't understand the rhetoric about the rich not being affected. They have been (rightly) the first to have to dig into their pockets.

I do not mean to offend those who earn less 50k but it would be a massive shock if we had to wind back to 50k so not sure about the research that says I should expereince diminishing marginal returns over 50k....certainly not my experience

Labour proposed 20% cuts so I don't know what the unions are getting to hot under the collar over. They will have no choice but to accept them whether they feel they can stand for it or not.

The state does very little very well so the more we cut it back the better.

It doesn't really matter what the causes are or what party is cutting. It's like balancing the household budget. The cupboard is bear so now we need to get out of this mess and we can only do that by cutting in ways that affect enough people that it genuinely means savings are made.
We owe about £15k for every person in the UK - www.debtbombshell.com/

Just like a bad housewife/money manager we have spent more than we had and now we pay the price.

To put it simply, the cuts in public services mean that your frontline services will be affected in a immediately visible way. For example:
Bins not collected as much
Benefits taking longer to process
Untrained teaching assistants doing more classroom work than teachers
Longer waits at hospitals and surgeries.

Sorry to have to break it down so simply but this is what the cuts mean. And that's why the unions won't stand for it.

And for the record, I'm a union rep and I work my arse off, and if you are anti-union, you are anti-equality in my opinion.

They certainly made a mess of things.

I am sure most business women and men want a much simpler tax system. I do. Get rid of all the distortions and allowances and just have a clear flat rate which people are happy to pay. Then they come here and make their wealth here and benefit this country. If everyone paid 30% tax (we used to have 33% basic rate tax I remember from when I was first working and I would much perer a flat 10% than 30% and much much less state provision of all kinds of things) then things would feel a lot fairer.

Over the last 13 years the Labour government systematically increased personal taxation and reduced hundreds of tax allowances. They took that money and spent like there was no tomorrow, increasing the benefit bill with their bizarre system of tax credits & growing the public sector into the unmanageable, overblown state it is today... at the same time relying on perpetual growth in the financial sector to provide the country's wealth. It would be ironic, not to say insulting if, to fix the mess created, another government were to come back to the same private individuals for yet more money.

Now that would be worthy of a riot...

no the crux of the problem is that the goverment are making hugh cuts which effect a lot of people who are on benifits of one kind or another for legitimate reasons and they will be the people that suffer the most along with their children if they have them.

"Unlike those earning under £50k who are not constantly striving to gain more and more wealth"

I'm sorry that really doesn't ring true after the consumer credit & bankruptcy boom of recent times. They may have been 'not constantly striving' to gain more wealth in a legitimate sense but many evidently overborrowed and overspent money to simulate the wealthy lifestyle nevertheless. And I know it's tempting to charicature every CEO as some grasping 'Mr Burns' figure, trampling all over their workers and salting their cash in offshore accounts... but that's as insulting & inaccurate as tarring all benefit claimants as 'scroungers'

There are areas of the tax system that need addressing but I don't think that's the crux of the problem here.

it is the other way around -once you earn over £50k you don't achieve more or gain more happiness, in fac tthey want more and more

Unlike those earning under £50k who are not constantly striving to gain more and more wealth

So I am not to sure those poor are jealous of the rich, but perhaps they would like a fair sytem rather than the rich keep piling up their mass richesand ever stirving to gain more at the expense of others

"This is simply an issue of fairness and the poor being jealous of the rich."

It is nothing to do with jealous and everything to do with fairness, when they cleaner pays proportionally more tax than the CEO even you have to admit something is wrong with that scenario ?

It is no different between PG using tax aviodence and a husaband and wife using tax aviodence - it is both wrong to aviod paying tax

PG may make a lot of money for the country - yes his staff on miinum wages are paying tax and they are claiming tax credits and child tax crdits if they are eligable - so who is supporting his companies wages bills - the tax payers of which he is avioding paying tax

I would be interested to know how many of his staff are being subsidised by the goverment as he is not paying a living wage but taking money out of the counrty that could be paying wages with

I wonder how much you have to earn to aviod paying that hugh amount of tax

I know a few people in FInancial Services who have left are leaving. Chappie who was my boss last year now in HKG very happy with his take home. I think the banks have more inertia but the "private funds" are more mobile.