A worker on £40k per year is £39 pw better off than his unemployed counterpart.

House prices are high here and wages are very low. Very rare to encounter anyone on 40k. Average hoise price is 14 times income

Soul, Say a small company is not making any profit, why not reduce their vat bill to 10% or less if the company paid the saving to the staff
Firms would employ some creative accounting procedures and file accounts showing they were breaking even. VAT is paid by customers to the firm, the firm then pay this on to HMRC so reducing VAT to small firms wouldn't necessarily benefit the firm. It would, of course, mean they could perhaps undercut larger rivals by charging a lower overall price.

soul - its rubbish isn't it.

There is so much that is wrong that it is hard to know where to start.

The problem is that the councils probably cannot afford to cut business rates as their budgets are being slashed all the time too. There will come a time I should imagine where we have to pay for some of the basics in life such as bin collections as councils won't be-able to afford to pay it out of what they get. The council priorities will always have to be services for those who can't help themselves such as child protection, schools, social care, benefits, council housing etc. For those in work the services they receive may have to be paid for I would think. Then it will get even harder.

I think in parts of Ireland they pay for bins.

Thanks Frog. Say a small company is not making any profit, why not reduce their vat bill to 10% or less if the company paid the saving to the staff.

Another stupid thing is business rates are killing many small and family owned businesses. These family owned businesses in many circumstances
only have enough to pay their staff "CRAP"wages.

I know of families who own business that have been going 75 years plus who "EVEN KNOW AFTER THE SUPPOSED RECOVERY" are not taking salary's these long established companies are fighting for their survival.

Soul - it probably does mean that.!!! I am often the stupid one on here!

Anyway - thank you for discussing it with me. There was me thinking I had come up with the answers to the countries problem and everybody ignored me except you - so thank you.!!!!!!!! Obviously it wasn't as good as I thought!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry. I thought you were talking about a term for VAT threshold .

STUPID ME.

Cross post - National Minimum Wage.

Soul - what I am suggesting though is that for those companies really struggling they would get help paying the minimum wage so they would be better off even though the NMW would be a lot higher.

So a win win. Workers would get their full wage from the company they work for, companies struggling to pay it would get help in the form of tax credits (which used to go direct to those workers), but the very rich companies wouldn't get help paying their wage bill and so the government makes a saving for those workers who worked for the high profit companies but now are fully paid by them and not tax credits.

To me it seems a good idea !

Sorry Frog. what does NMW stand for.

I know it's not a hardship, it's just that we always used to have the choice.

There would need to be massive cuts in VAT and local councils would need to reduce business rates massively. Many business in catering cant even afford the minimum wage that is set now £6.23 Per Hour. Most pubs cant even afford to pay their staff the minimum wage. I am sure catering is not the only industry in the country that is struggling to survive.

Soul2000 - sorry I don't understand. Would that be the case if the NMW was increased and they could apply to pay the increase out of some form of tax credit so that it didn't affect those companies not making massive profit.?

I think it would be impossible to increase the NMW dramatically without protecting the lower profit companies as they wouldn't be-able to afford to pay people. But at the moment the government is giving benefits to people who are working but on low wages. Surely for the high profit companies who benefit from this by having low paid workers that is wrong.

Housing costs are a disgrace, that's why I am unsure about the govt help to buy scheme. Why is our govt propping up unsustainable house prices? I do have sympathy with those who are struggling to get on the housing market now and count myself very lucky to have bought my first house 2 bedroom house in Edinburgh for 68k in 97. I do recognise the personal tragedy of those who want to buy and can't but fear that propping up the big builders will only sustain the unaffordability of housing in the uk. Surely on a basic case of supply and demand, if customers cannot afford to buy then prices (at some point) must come down?

Frogwatcher. For many privately owned small and medium sized businesses
they would need to be massive cuts in VAT and local business rates.

I don't mind not having holidays like we used to, and I don't give a monkeys about going out or takeaways, but it's just awful when we literally cannot afford new clothes or shoes for the children when they need them - that's not meant to sound pitiful or pathetic, it is just a fact now :(

I agree, EETraceyluv, and the cost of housing is the worst of all. How did we get into the situation where so much of income goes on just putting a roof over people's heads? When our parents' generation were buying houses they could afford to do it on one very average income - factory workers, rail workers (like my father), postal workers ... everyone could afford to house their families. And now you have the ridiculous situation where even dual-income families struggle and housing benefit costs £21bn a year (a year! ffs).

I used to think £30K was a fabulous income, but it just isn't any more. It's not the fault of the 'benefits system', it's the rocketing of the cost of living!

Do you mean your income including all benefits is nowhere near £40k Mrs DV? Perhaps your housing costs are not all that high?

If someone has discredited the "facts" in the op post then can I be directed to the post?. I confess to not understanding all the ins and outs of benefits, especially housing benefit, but I come at this from the pov that £40,000 to support a family is not a high income, rather than benefits are too generous.

If your outside of London mintyy 40k is more than enough

Absolute bullshit. We live in a very prosperous, very very expensive city in the east and bring home under £35K between us. We get hardly any tax credits - £40 a month or something stupid, pay dinner money, actually have started to give them packed lunches, I daren't get my eyes tested till recently because of the cost of new glasses, dh never goes to the dentist now, because we can only really afford for one of us to pay for it and our outgoings including bloody council tax are huge, I get so cross when it is assumed we are laughing all the way to the bank because of where we live, because we have a mortgage here, in the city, as opposed to a nearby village which is where most of my colleagues live, (interest only, so are fucked in about 15 years unless things improve) It's incredibly hard whether in London or not.

The cost of private renting is enormous and usually far more than a mortgage .

When did you buy mrsdv?

It's not the mortgage payments. Those would be less than my rent. It's the deposit.