Britain's totally unfair tax system

fellatio - i don't i'm afraid - please say? my degree was obviously a total waste of time!

Yes - either cut and paste your quotes or just used good old fashioned quotation marks please - we do all know what they mean!

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////ivanhoe stop doing this it's bloody annoying and has no meaning on this forum////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Agree with ScaryTeacher. Not only to I hand over more than half my salary on tax/NI, everything else is more expensive here - car insurance, car tax, utility bills, clothes etc. And bin bags! If you buy a car you have to pay mise en service charge. To buy a house you have to also hand over an average of 17% of the purchase price in taxes and fees. Needless to say, the property market is very different here as people only move if they have to.

I am agog at the threads on here where people give tips on how to manage on £30/50 per week for food. My budget for 3 of us is 120 euros - I could cut back a bit, but 30 euros would buy you bugger all here. It would even buy a roll of those bin bags. You would struggle to buy a decent takeaway for 2 people on that amount also.

In addition, under the French speaking education system I have a huge list of stuff to buy each year for dd's school books. There are constant demands for cash for this and that throughout the year. Conversely under the Dutch speaking education system, everything is provided - even school trips. The most you are expected to pay is 25 euros per child per year. So my next door neighbour pays next to nothing whilst it costs me 100s. We live in the same commune, our children go to school in the same (different) commune. I think this is a tad unfair.

What is cheaper? - childcare/activities, and alcohol and cigarettes.

'What a load of intellectual bunkum.

EU citizens pay higher income tax, with no local tax like ours. End of story.

Kinnock and co. have nothing to do with my posting.

The differences between the EU and the UK are vast.

While we Brit's live in the dark ages with primative little Englader ideas, Europe moves forward democratically with social democracy'

Not intellectual bunkum - solid legislation Ivanhoe.You may like to refer to the relevant Local Government and Finance Acts for the relevant information.

The EU consists of member states with different member states charging local taxes in their own way. There is no one size fits all way of doing it. Porto lives 15 minutes from me. Her binbags for her gemeente are 10 euros more expensive than mine. Thus, there is a difference in how local taxes are charged.

Kinnock and Co have a lot to do with this. If we weren't paying such a high contribution to the EU coffers for the likes of Kinnock and Mandelson, then we would have more money for our economy and income tax could drop, as well as CTAX.

I don't quite know where you get the idea that the EU represents social democracy, or that it is even democratic in any way shape or form. Churchill pointed out that we would be better to position ourselves with the US rather than Europe. Can't say I disagree.

I live in Belgium and yes, there are differences between Belgium and the UK. The UK is far, far cheaper for most things. I do not buy clothes, shoes, books, electrical/electronic equipment here as it is so expensive. I hit Sainsburys and fill up the back of the car when we are home, because food costs much less in the UK.

You may like to compare things in the UK like stamp duty which is far less than you pay here in Belgium for the purchase of a house.

I really don't think you have a scooby what you are talking about.

Comparable to the UK council tax, you have to pay tax for your house or flat in Germany, the so called ?Grundsteuer?. Property or estate tax is charged in Germany to cover local services and is rated usually below the current market value and would be around 1% of the rateable value. Non-residents are subject to wealth tax on property owned in Germany of around 0.5%.
When you own your home, you will pay the tax to the municipalities. Many municipalities connect the collection of the real estate tax with the collection from the property owners to paying use fees for garbage disposal, road cleaning and drainage. When you rent you home, your landlord is allowed to pass this tax on to you in the so called ?Nebenkosten? the accessory charges added on to the net rent.

"EU citizens pay higher income tax, with no local tax like ours. End of story"

Where on earth did you get this idea?

I live in France. We pay :

• Income tax
• A yearly "habitation" tax based on the size of your flat/house which goes towards paying for rubbish collection etc.in your local area
• Plus a yearly "houseowners" tax, where we pay because we own our flat. This money also partly goes towards the equivalent of local councils.

Really good point Fellatio.

Ivanhoe you seem to be all for raising income tax, why don't you stop for a moment and consider that the very people who pay HR tax already contribute the most and demand the least financially.

Let's move towards the American model where income tax has several steps with the highest rate being 35% after $330,000.

Fiscally America walks all over Europe and it's bureaucratic wastage. I would prefer to take a leaf out of their book rather than stay affiliated to the unsustainable European model.

fell - i've been wondering about that. surely its against the free movement of people and is therefore against the regulations? i wonder if it could be challenged in court?

ivanhoe, I already said that we pay local taxes. It comes from wages at source, rather than a separate bill - but it is still a local tax.

As you seem to know so much about the EU I wonder if you could explain to me why it is that students from all the EU countries can study at Scottish universities for free, in common with Scottish students, with the exception of the English and the Welsh who have to pay to go to a Scottish university?

'but when people brought their houses under the old rating system, they knew what the rates were, they didnt expect to poor to bail them out, which is what has been happening since the poll tax, and now the council tax.'

What crap - they knew the Rateable Value, just as they know their CTAX banding. What they didn't know was what the rate poundage was going to be each year, just as we don't know until the SSA is given from Central Govt what the CTAX will be each year.

Had there been a general domestic uprating as there should have been (there had not been one since 1973), you would have been paying far more in rates than in Community Charge. If you consider that there was far more pre 1973 housing stock in 1990 when CC was introduced than post 1973 housing stock, then we were all woefully undercharged.

The poor don't bail anyone out for CTAX and neither did they for CC. There was, and is a system of CC benefit and CTAX benefit that allows a certain amount of income (and capital) on a sliding scale to provide relief. You can have all your CTAX offset by CTB, so please, get your facts right. It is those who pay in full who subsidise this. Those that default effectively force the CTAX up each year as the Councils have to charge more to make provision for bad debts.

Porto - my binbags are 30 euros for 20 big ones, best you move!

'EU's vital public services' ? Surely an oxymoron. I was not aware that the EU actually provided any vital public services at all to the UK, but merely burdened us with demands for more money. If there wasn't the EU, then VAT wouldn't be so high as a proportion of that is paid to the EU.

'Higher taxation across the EU, means smaller class sizes and better educated children, its that simple' Been to Albania lately then?

There may be higher taxes across EU member states, but I would point out that EU fonctionnaires and other employees pay a 'special' rate of income tax (not a lot), have various other privileges, and that we pay via the EU a lot of money to the Kinnocks and Mandelson (£8k per month to the latter to tide him over until he finds a new job for up to 10 years) for the privilege of them having been EU comissioners and MEPs.

Um. I am not an expert by any means. Dd is in first primary and in a class of 26. She is 6.5. I have to say that our employers pay our "hospitalisation insurance" and care is apparently fantastic. I pay my extortionate taxes and reap the benefits. But I have no clue on what the situation is here if you are long time unemployed or disabled.

ivanhoe i cannot justify the income tax i have paid to central gov, thats why i voted conservative. /////// why these lines please? should we all start doing it or do you have something wrong with your keyboard?

They know the council tax band though don't they?