No more cuts needed - IF we tax fairly

niceguy2 I called him a pillock and said he was talking bollocks up thread - I stand by every word. I think that right now he thinks that you and I are one and the same.

I was going to pick up on the inheritance tax avoidance thingummy as evidence of double standards but you have phrased it far more eloquently than I would have done.

As for your critique of communism, you've forgotten the uncomfortable fact that implementing communism usually requires a large pile of dead bodies. Other than that, I think your post is 'spotty dog'.

But MrsMicawber. How can you argue that avoiding inheritance tax is OK but for someone else who does something equally legal is not?

The whole capitalist system works in a pyramid fashion. The rich are needed to spend money and that in turn filters down to the poor.

Theoretically speaking it's a perverse system and is totally unfair. Something like communism is much fairer where everyone is equal and everyone gets paid the same, with the state deciding how best to use it's resources.

However, in reality every single country which has tried it has failed.

And I know I'd rather be poor in a capitalist state than a communist/socialist/marxist/other one.

Tabloid, I never said pillock, bollocks but I did respond with 'utter rubbish' because as I explained above, I thought the statement was.

But hey, feel free to attribute any insults to me you like. All it does is show you don't have any facts to debate.

I would think that the fact that there are only 300,000 higher rate tax payers is indicative of the importance of a good accountant, the benefits of paying some (most?) of your earnings in dividends and that the tax rate of 62% (50% Income Tax, 12% NI) is far too high.

That is tax avoidance in action.

MrsMicawber, is your comment in response to my point about there only being 300,000 higher rate tax payers in the UK? If so can you explain further, I would like to respond but don't quite understand your point.

hurling insults such as pillock, bollocks, utter rubbish Mr nice guy? i suggest you have a chat with yourself.

tabloidhysteria "you can't reason with a fundamentalist."

Nor can you reason with a pillock who consistently denies facts that are self-evident .

you've made me view all those cheerleaders you seem to have in a new light though niceguy. you accuse others of masquerading as others as you probably do just that. explains why your vacuous right wing tabloid fluff seems to garner support from some. MrPants is you then. anyone agreeing with you is you. ta dah.

get back to patronising the wimmin.

fundamentalists are also paranoid.

I see Tabloid you've not answered my question about name changing. Given that and the fact you've not come up with any proposal and merely hurling insults at anyone with an opposing view, I suspect you are a Glasnost/Ttosca and merely a name changer.

absolutely nothing to retort to MrPants as his mindset is so fatally, philosophically skewed to the neoliberal right that's ruining our globe as to reject reasoned debate. you can't reason with a fundamentalist.

may I suggest a brief chat with analytical thinking and not knee jerk foaming? better to be a frother than a fundamentalist foamer. good day.

tabloidhysteria "your posts are so much parodistic right wing flim flam based on a distorted topsy turvy world view it's unreal. "tax aviodance" is legal? ah well that's alright then."

Yes, I'll repeat for those at the back, tax avoidance is perfectly legal. It is the right of every man, woman or business in this country to order their affairs so that they minimise their exposure to tax. If you don't understand this, may I suggest a brief chat with an accountant?

However you dress up the issue semantically there is a possibility that Vodafone have already complied with the letter of the law - whether you personally dislike the law is irrelevant. I dislike many laws but I've still got to abide by them - under those circumstances, throwing words around such as 'criminal' is just stupid. I maintain that it's best to wait for the result of the ongoing investigation before passing judgement - you seem convinced of Vodafone's guilt already.

"the cuts are illegit as they're ideologically motivated to roll back the welfare state."

Once again, you are the one that comes across as a ?frother?. Firstly, the country is sailing perilously close to bankruptcy and, despite the best efforts of the government; we are still borrowing money faster than we are paying it back. If nothing is done, one day we will go bust just like Greece. Making cuts is therefore not illegitimate; it is the responsible thing to do. Whether they are ideologically motivated doesn't matter.

MrsMicawber "Why is 'tax the poor' any more viable than 'tax the rich'? There is more in the pot with rich people."

And the rich already pay disproportionally more.

I suppose it comes down to deciding who we consider 'rich' MrsMicawber.

If we consider anyone paying higher rate tax, so earning over £150k, to be rich then this represents just 1% of the population or a little over 300,000 people.

So, aside from the fact that this group already pays 24% of the entire income tax take, you could tax them until they squeak and it still wouldn't be enough to solve our problems.

I'd forgotten about Cinnabar's great post on the Vodafone tax issue and it sounds to me like HMRC are in a very weak position and perhaps it's for this reason that the government decided to take £1 billion rather than go to court and more than likely losing £7 billion and opening up a HUGE loophole for many other companies to take.

Tabloid, you sound just like some of the other posters like Glasnost and Ttosca who seem to have disappeared or v. quiet nowadays. Are you a namechanger? Neither of them needed to use little things like facts and figures to form a coherent argument for their 'debates' and simply resorted to personal insults and attacks instead.

Noone disputes tax which is due is collected. What is often in dispute is how much tax is owed.

The problem with the 'tax the rich' argument is that there simply isn't enough rich people around to pay for the deficit.

At the end of the day, we are where we are. It's cut now or cut more later. Will the poor suffer? Yes. Is there another realistic choice? No.

If anyone has a sensible and realistic plan which can tackle the deficit without affecting the poor then I'm sure the government would love to hear it, as would we all. Until then it's cut now on our terms or cut more later when someone else is deciding.

MrPants you are either a wind up merchant or one deluded foamer. your posts are so much parodistic right wing flim flam based on a distorted topsy turvy world view it's unreal. "tax aviodance" is legal? ah well that's alright then. I've heard in some lands it's legal to stone your adulterous wife. a govt beholden to corporate interests makes laws that favour their paymasters. my use of the adjective "criminal" to describe these tax dodging antics was a widely perceived moral judgement otherwise I'd have used the substantive "a crime". the cuts are illegit as they're ideologically motivated to roll back the welfare state.

I'll keep up the good work and you keep yer pants up, Mister. your cheeks are showing.

MrsMicawber What's the point of your first sentence? Where do you get the idea that I don't care about others from? I care deeply about others - so much so that I think people would be bettter off by taking responsibility for themselves rather than expecting a fly-by-night government to do their thinking and providing for them. You cannot get rich by expecting handouts, you can get rich by working for a living and you can get very rich by putting your cock on the block and starting your own business (of course, with the latter you run the risk of losing the shirt off your back too). Either way, impoverishing the rich in the name of fairness makes everyone poorer.

I'm sorry but I can't agree with you about wealth and totally disagree that MOST people are left behind. It may have been the case that 50 years ago a family could survive with one bread winner - I dare say that if you only spent money on the sort of things they did, then you could probably manage it too. Unfortunately, you'd probably end up missing your PC, broadband, phone, coffee shops, exotic foods, holidays to anywhere other than Blackpool etc... too much.

MrsMicawber - I have no idea what is happening inside HMRC about this. Nor, it seems, does anyone else as there is claim and counter-claim even in the linked article. It's not really possible to say how far either sides right or wrong.

That is why I hope there will be a proper investigation (say by NAO), so we can find out what has happened over the last 20 years; recover as much as possible; and learn from it.

Unfortunately, the current Government is showing itself no more competent at administration than the last one.

But even if it were competent, the scale of the debt and continued overspending is so vast that even £25billion doesn't begin to plug it. That is the staggering and worrying thing.

breadandbutterfly I knew someone was going to say that their grandparents were better off hence why I clearly stated 'generally' in my post.

House prices are certainly higher now than they were in the past - this is due to stupid planning regulations, the laws of supply and demand and the affects of housing benefit all inflating the markets. The counterpoint is that a) buying your home is (rightly or wrongly - and I?m not convinced either way myself) far more prevalent today than it was prior to the Thatcher administration and b) interest rates are far lower.

Contrary to your point about gadgets they are vital to our well being. By making household chores easier and making food last longer, gadgets such as the washing machine and the refrigerator freed up the lives of our grandmother?s generation. It then becomes a straight forward decision - would you rather women were working and increasing their earning capacity (with gadgets), or were housewives locked into domestic drudgery (without gadgets)?

Either way, this has nothing to do with the 99% which is what I said, and I maintain, is bollocks.

As for trusting a politician not to renege on a promise once they are elected, fool you. The budgets had to be cut, the scale of the problem was, and still is, massive and so far, all the cuts combined still fall far short of the £130 billion more they need to save in order to balance the books. To ignore this fact is the true ignorance.