50% tax rate - unexpected consequence

lou - just because someone is paid more, it doesn't follow that they are overpaid.

Different jobs attract different remuneration, that has always been the case and always should be.

If we are talking about overpaid, now that would be a top-flight footballer on £120k per week, not a GP on £120k per year.

That does not mean they are overpaid.

GPs save lives and there is nothing more important than our health. As a result in order to become a GP you need to be pretty damn clever (multiple As at A Level, heavy competition to get into the likes of Cambridge), and you would have many other options in life, which would likewise pay well, because capable people are in demand.

It's ludicrous to say that GPs are overpaid because (say) they get paid 3* more than a McDonalds manager. Clearly the positions are not equal.

If you earn £100000 pa you get £65310 nett
If you earn £150000 pa you get £92220 nett

If you earn £20000 pa you get £15724 nett

say your GP who earns £150000 pa works 100 hours per week. (7 days per week, 14 hours per day). They still earn £17.73 per hour.

The person on £20000 per year works 40 hrs per week. They earn £7.55 per hour.

Now tell me GPs aren't overpaid.

I'm pretty sure the problem is not the 50% tax bracket, but rather the 61.5% marginal tax rate above £100k.

Speaking for myself I can earn let's say £120k a year working 9-6pm. Or I can earn £135k working 8am-7pm. I go for less money because it's enough, and it doesn't make sense for me to work the extra hours for what is effectively less money.

Equally if you are a GP earning say £40/hour (net), extra hours paid at £23/hour (due to the high marginal tax rate) are not going to look terribly attractive, compared to beeing at home with the family.

The cure for cancer will be discovered, no doubt, by some poor super-smart hugely qualified post-doc grinding away on less than £20K.

Mind you, I think I would find being a medical doctor dead boring, plus I'm squeamish

Don't know what happened there - was after the "not equals" sign.

beanlet - cure for cancer will possibly be done in the area of research and thus on your sorts of rates of pay ... .

Don't worry. It's just election fall-out stuff. Most of us do know money ≠ worth.

what about dentists etc - them too?

Poor diddums. Have a GP friend who works one day a week and earns £27K per year. That was my starting salary as a university lecturer after, not 5 years (what doctors do), but 9 years of study, four degrees, and 3 years as an Oxbridge research fellow on £15K and I worked 80-hour weeks and took two weeks' holiday a year. Having moved institutions I now earn a little more, and work a little less 60-hour weeks, but still only taking a couple of weeks' holiday.

(And no, we don't have 6 months holiday a year -- our entitlement is 6 weeks per year including public holidays, and we work right through all the student vacations.)

OK, so I'm not working on the cure for cancer, but I do work on a serious area of community cohesion, not to mention teaching umpteen students -- and there are plenty of people (including my DH who teaches medical students!) who do indeed work on stuff that will save people's lives for FAR less than £150K per year.

GPs do work hard, no doubt about it. But not harder than loads of other people whose jobs are just as valuable to the economy and to society. GPs are massively overpaid. Sorry.

There are plenty of unfilled GP posts, and also vacant hopital doctor jobs, if they are over paid then why are there vacant posts?

Cristina - DH's surgery has such hugely long hours because of the number of patients they have. They cannot reject patients once they have signed up (and it would be ridiculous to do so). They are currently trying to find another doctor, in order to take a pay cut each but be able to see more patients - so yes, it should be possible. There aren't always enough trained and experienced doctors available to fill vacancies. One of the doctors who got pilloried for taking home upwards of 250k earned that because he was single handed in a surgery that had previously had 2 doctors, but he hadn't been able to find someone to fill the other post.

To be able to work 9-5 (as in arrive at 9 and leave at 5) I guess given the current amounts of paperwork, a doctor's surgery would have to end at about 2pm.

doctors are very clever - not everyone can do it however many hours they work

am i not allowed to say that?

lily - it is about choices as well - could you have been a gp - you want to?

maybe we should all be paid the same

JJ - so that £150K a year GP that some people on here are feeling so sorry for, they do actually have to work unreasonably long hours? So they could actually give some of it up, for their own sake and that of their patients (who wouldn't get a tired, frazzled, grumpy GP). It's not the sort of money you make in 9-5, 5 days a week.

Sorry, just have to laugh at the idea that "most GPs work 9-5". I assume that was a flippant comment? DH gets home at about 7.30-8pm most nights, except the day he does extended hours when it can be 9.30 (and he works 10 minutes away so it's not because of a commute). Then he has to bring home paperwork. Maybe the official patient-seeing sessions are 9-5 (not most of the practices round here, they're all 8 or 8.30 to at least 6 plus extended hours) but that never actually means the last patient leaves at the end of 'official' surgery time.

DH would never kick out a patient just because their 10 minutes allotted time is up, so he's always running late (and of course gets complained at because of that), his last patient is often there at 7 or later and then once the patients are gone there's the writing referral letters, checking test results, filling out insurance forms, signing repeat prescriptions, etc etc. Oh and phoning patients who hadn't been able to make it in, and often going out to visit them if they ask for a visit - never mind that 'surgery' might have finished a couple of hours ago.

When DH trained as a GP 15 years ago it was because it supposedly gave him the opportunity to get to know his patients and develop a relationship with them, and then have a reasonable work-life balance. Both of those have gone out the window over the last 10 years to the point that he's considering leaving the profession. Being paid well (not 100k mind you, that would be nice!) does not make up for the stress of being under huge pressure to meet targets (rather than care for patients), frequently being insulted and threatened by patients who feel they know better than him (give me antibiotics for my cold), and very rarely being home in time for his daughter's bedtime.

Just winding you up a bit, EAP

within specialism, i don't doubt those Noctors do know more than the Gp, especially given the tripe told to some Mners by their GP!

As there are seemingly, lots of GPs on MN I'd best shut my trap though...

"some nurses are very highly qualified and attain the same knowledge level as a Dr. but still aren't eligible for that kind of pay. and can't legally write prescriptions... "

Oooohhh, the "noctors" (nurse-doctors). I hope you don't talk like that when real doctors are present They haven't the same level of knowledge, for starters.

I don't think they should be complaining and I don't think they are worth five times more than a nurse.

this is another thing - some nurses are very highly qualified and attain the same knowledge level as a Dr. but still aren't eligible for that kind of pay. and can't legally write prescriptions...

I commented that to a MW i was forced to see on a saturday because my sodding surgery wasn't open!!! She was obviously paid enough to work weekends.

this is definitely one area where the Labour governent made the rich richer, and at a great cost to the public purse.

Doesn't it cost £250,000 to train a doctor (that we pay) and they have seen very good pay increases in the last few years. I don't think they should be complaining and I don't think they are worth five times more than a nurse.

and the vast majority of GPs don't work long unsociable hours - they work 9-5 since they don't have to do OOHs

"cazwa people are generally paid a lot because they are very clever -have worked bloody hard from age 14 - deferred a lot of god times whilst their mates were having fun - are good at what they do and work long often unsociable hours"

I resent this - I did all of these things, as did dh, we work very very hard, always including evenings and weekends and get nothing like the pay of GPs. It's simply insulting to suggest that people aren't paid well because they haven't worked as hard as someone else.

As for arranging your finances I imagine this is hard to do when you are paid by the NHS. I know plenty of accountants living in large houses who are apparently basic rate tax payers

as already indicated, the NHS pays them as self-employed inividuals...that is by invoice (or some other obscure mechanism that simulates S-E invoicing) this leaves them a bit of wiggle room about how to play their finances...although probably if you're close to the threshold its not worth the hassle - you either pay it or don't bother earning it.

no sympathy at all for the "poor" GPs. Since the new contract GPs here won't do ANYTHING without being paid ridiculous amounts for it. Agree that they should be salaried and that OOHs should be part of their contract. Re inner city/deprived areas - well just pay them more to work there??

smallwhitecat

I agree with both your unpopular opinions